Well..............last week while I was at work a co-worker (who Im making a baby shower cake for) was talking to the mother to be. Then all of a sudden she says "Are you crasy, I aint gettin no Plain Yellow box cake crap, These cakes are Custom, If you want a crap plain old cake go to Sams.Im buying it and I want it to taste good." Well I was rolling on the floor laughing just listening to her. She never asked me if the cake started as a box mix. And she thinks it tastes homemade. All my clients think they taste homemade. Only one person has asked if the cake was box mix or not and she said she really didnt care, cause it tasted so good.And the most requested cake is.......White Almond Sour Cream!!!
I know what you mean! I love hearing the "Oh your cakes are SO good!" and I'm thinking " 
It's the same cake mix YOU buy in the store for your kid's birthday party!"
Another of my favorites: The bride who was gushing on how good my cakes taste and proclaiming that she HATES frozen cakes. The look on her face was priceless when I told her that cake in her mouth had been in my freezer for 3 weeks!
Face it...box mix cakes and frozen cakes are looked down upon by many people. They really don't get it. One lady was shocked that her cake for Friday night wasn't baked that morning. Hello...I work. It'll be ready Thursday night and you won't be able to tell that it was baked and iced on Tuesday!
I'm having the same confused reaction to the fast food restaurant that is running the commercial on hamburger that is "never frozen".
Maybe I have a good 'ole boy pallet, but so far no one has been able to describe the difference in taste between a frozen and a never-frozen hamburger patty to me!
Then there's the bakery in my town that advertises "never frozen" but when my co-workers bought me a birthday cake from there, it had to be returned because it was so frozen we couldn't cut it!
Well..............last week while I was at work a co-worker (who Im making a baby shower cake for) was talking to the mother to be. Then all of a sudden she says "Are you crasy, I aint gettin no Plain Yellow box cake crap, These cakes are Custom, If you want a crap plain old cake go to Sams.Im buying it and I want it to taste good." Well I was rolling on the floor laughing just listening to her. She never asked me if the cake started as a box mix. And she thinks it tastes homemade. All my clients think they taste homemade. Only one person has asked if the cake was box mix or not and she said she really didnt care, cause it tasted so good.And the most requested cake is.......White Almond Sour Cream!!!
im a scratch baker, but that WASC will defintitely make you think twice about using box mixes. Its SOOO good.
I use mixes one wedding the grandpa just had to talk to me he was a retired baker... he wanted to know my recipe... I said ummmm I use an old falily recipe Duncan Hines he said well Mr hines has a great family recipe keep using it it is better than any scratch white cake I ever had all I do is add a tiny bit of almond flavoring.
Hmmm.. frozen Burgers vs. fresh.. I must have a very sensitive pallet cause I can definately tell the difference between frozen and fresh burgers. I used to own a 50's style diner and all our Sirloin Burgers were ground fresh daily and cooked the same day. When we were opening one of the salesman from a major food company came by to try to sell me some of their top quality frozen Burgers. He demonstrated them by cookin on the grill and said all the restaurant's in the area ordered theirs from them. My family and some friends taste tested them and they did not impress us in the least. Yuck, the other restaraunts could keep their month's old frozen Burgers cause they werent for us. They dont compare with fresh by any means! Of course in all fairness I know they werent made with sirloin either. If they were and maybe frozen for only a few day's it might not have been so bad. But I have no idea what he meant by top quality ground beef! So that might be like comparing apples and oranges . Having said that I have only frozen cakes/cupcakes once and it was only for a day or two and they still turned out great 
heh... people at dh's work always send him home with rave reviews about my fantastic homemade cakes and so on. and i just smile and say thanks, i'm glad you liked it. never mentioning that man i'm glad betty crocker measures my ingredients for me ahead of time. 
Not much of a red meat fan...but I am sure a cake tastes much better 24-48 hours after it has been iced. When I make a cake for my family they notice that it just keeps getting better as the days go by. I do like to bake from scratch but I did try the wasc once and it was good and most certainly was at its best 48 hours later. Also, I often freeze cakes for several weeks and get rave reviews!!
Okay, I have NEVER seen a WASC cake....I'm sure that I'm missing out on something good. So can someone please tell me if this is a box or a homemade job???? Sorry for sounding so dumb!
Please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't beef, after it is aged,frozen before it is shipped where ever it is going to be broken down. I know the butcher in the store down the street receives their product frozen whole then they cut it up into steaks roasts and what ever.
if you haven't tried the WASC cake you really should! it's wonderful! i made it for a wedding cake a few weeks ago. baked thursday iced & decorated friday and saturday it was perfect! the full recipe makes a honkin' lot of cake. definately try it out!
Please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't beef, after it is aged,frozen before it is shipped where ever it is going to be broken down. I know the butcher in the store down the street receives their product frozen whole then they cut it up into steaks roasts and what ever.
Yep comes to the stores frozen. My dad was a butcher for many years.
I'm so glad this topic was brought up! I always wanted to ask if using boxed cakes were "taboo." My boxed cakes always turn out more moist than my cakes from scratch. So, is it safe to assume that the consensus doesn't dislike boxed cakes?
Here's a funny story. At school, we are a small group of 10. Because we're so small, we have become very close, naturally. We were celebrating one of my classmate's birthdays and I offered to make him a cake. Well, in typical Debby fashion, I waited until the last minute and ended up having to use a boxed cake. It was white. It came out great. I took it to class, my classmates loved it. Someone asked me for the recipe and I told them it was boxed. My instructor said, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" He said that after he cleaned his plate, mind you. 
He said you should be ashamed of yourself? You made a cake from a box that some big high-falootin' chef thought was from scratch ... to the point that he asked for your recipe???
I think you oughta be pretty proud of yourself to make that kind of impression!! 
I used to be a scratch baker but started using boxes when I was taking the Wilton classes. My mother (who did cakes years ago) taught me to use milk instead of water and vegetable oil (not canola) in the mixes. I also add flavoring. I have more compliments on my box cakes. Everyone tells me how moist and delicious they are.
Occasionally, I will still try a scratch recipe, but the hands down favorite cakes are the box mixes.
When I was young you could make a lot of money at the fair so I entered as many things as I could. One year they had a division for boxed cakes. I entered a boxed cake and a scratch cake. When I went back to see how I had done the boxed mix had won the grand prize and was displayed prominently with a huge ribbon for the best scratch cake. I was so embarrassed and didn't know what to do. The judges were all gone and the fair was in full swing. I double checked to see if I had written down the wrong code number which I hadn't, so I just left it hoping no one would notice. My other cake got a blue ribbon.
Yes I would have to agree that the WASC is wonderful.
I am sooo on-the-fence about this now. I've been doing scratch cakes for the last few months, with varying degrees of success. I'm still learning, but when I do make a box mix (doctored a bit) once-in-a-while, people love it just as much if not more than the scratch.
In LA, people are all about natural, fresh, organic, no-additives or preservatives... I really want to say that I do all scratch, but I'm still deciding.
I love the box cake mixes and use them a lot.
Another story that shows the bias against box mixes: I was watching 'Top Chef' (on Bravo) a couple of years ago and the elimination challenge was that the competitors were divided into two teams and each had to prepare a five-course meal for a wedding. One of the teams decided to really go for it by doing a wedding cake although none of them was a pastry chef.
The head judge came through the kitchen while the meal was being prepped and saw the empty box of cake mix. During the final judges' comments, that team got lambasted for using a cake mix. I thought back to what my instructor had told me (below) and thought "Huh. Goes to show what you know about cakes."
(My instructor was a professional cake decorator for 30 years and did many wedding cakes. She always prepared both scratch and box mix versions of the cake for the wedding party tasting. She said that at least 80% chose the box mix. That was what they preferred.)
OaklandRaiderDude wrote:correct me if I'm wrong but isnt beef after it is aged, frozen before it is shipped whereever it is going to be broken down. I know the butcher down the street receives their product;s frozen whole then they cut it up to steaks roasts and whatever.
AnythingSugar say's: Yep comes to the store frozen. My dad was a butcher for many years.
O.K This all depends on what region you live in. In some areas this might be the case. My 2 uncles were meat butchers at a grocery market in a highly populated area/ city. About 80/90 % of meat came in was shipped frozen. I live in a farming community where a lot of farmers (including my husbands family) have taken their beef cattle/sows chickens etc...To the local meat market where they immediately process and package your meat within 3-4 day's. I would get my sirloin fresh, it would already be ground and Packaged. Never frozen!! You have a choice of picking up your meat as soon as they process it and pkg it, or for anyone who want's their meat to go into the freezer immediately they will also Pkg/wrap it for you and then put into freezer until you pick it up. Now if you go into our local supermarket/grocery you will find some meat is processed fresh from a local farm having never been frozen, or you will also find some meat from other areas of the region that have been shipped frozen. I think we all learn something new everyday
I have used box mixes for all my cakes, with very rare exception. I have made WASC cake several times, and find it amazing.
Funny true story #1: I have made many cakes for get-togethers for a women's group (Beta Sigma Phi) I belong to. I ALWAYS use a box mix. There was a member of my group who always made comments about my "scratch" cakes, gushing over how moist, how fresh, how delicious they were. She went so far as to say it did not matter what someone might try to do to disguise a box mix, she could just "tell" and that's how she "knew" mine were scratch.
After her 3rd piece at one party, she asked me in front of everyone for my recipe. I asked her if she was sure she was up to it. She looked at mewith a puzzled expression and said "How hard can it be? I have been baking since I was little." Then I said, "Tell me what you think is in my recipe." She started "tasting" the cake on her plate really carefully, and started listing ingredients. I told her she was right on most counts, but I would get the recipe for her to read. I went to the kitchen and dug the box out of the trash and handed it to her, and said "There's the recipe for this cake. I made the frosting from scratch."
That was about 4 years ago and she has not spoken to me since then. Most everyone knew I used a box mix, I am not sure why she didn't. *shrug*
Funny true story #2: A client of mine kept asking me for the recipe for my cakes, I told her I prefered not to share, because then what would she need me for? She NEVER asked me if I made everything from scratch. Then one day she asked me again, like for the 20th time, and I said "OK, I'll tell you. I use Betty Crocker." She laughed and said "Yeah ...right... sure you do! 
You'll never tell me so I'll stop asking." LOL
yh9080, why use vegetable oil instead of canola? how is it different?
just my opinion, but I prefer canola, because it has a lighter taste and subsequently affects the cake flavor less
I've looked in the recipes and can't find the WASC doctored recipe anywhere. Can anyone help? Now I'm really curious!! 
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