Alright, so I started making my cakes for this weekend. I mix two classic yellow duncan hine boxes, add oil and water and used extra large eggs instead of large (I usually use xlarge) and it was sooooo liquidy. I thought I did something wrong.

sifted mix
added eggs one at a time, added water, then oil, mixed till incorperated, then beat on speed 5 for about 2 min....

Over baked the cupcakes, underbaked the 10'', but the 6'' was fine. But it still didn't taste right, and looked almost like cornbread?

Any idea what I did wrong...? What I can do to fix? I thought about adding a box of vanilla pudding to it? Someone said I should add an extra egg then?

I would do another recipe but the bride tried the box mix and liked it enough.. ? ergh. wedding on Sat... my FIRST!

Oh and they baked almost perfectly level! lol. something good came from it.

TIA

Cooking is an art, baking is a science.

Scratch cakes are only as good as the techniques used to make them. Cake mix cakes with the added emulsifiers, etc. are more mistake proof, but baker error can still occur.

Sorry to say, but you're changing the formula by using extra large eggs... By adding pudding you're going to further change the chemistry by adding more sugar to a cake that already has too much leavening. Too much sugar, fat and/or leavening will cause a cake to fall upon cooling.

You also deviated from the DH instructions by adding and beating after each egg addition. The instructions advise to add oil, water and (all) eggs and then combine for 30 seconds.....

Also, you used too high a speed to mix.. When I use my KA, I never go higher than 1 or 2 for a cake mix. (Medium speed is used on a HAND HELD mixer.)

A tried and true doctored DH cake mix recipe is the expanded flavors version of the WASC recipe:

http://tinyurl.com/2cu8s4

An additional chocolate WASC variation:

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-587744-.html

When I make any of the WASC cake recipes, I sift all the dry ingredients together into a large bowl, and mix all the wet ingredients in a second larger bowl.

Then I add the dry to the wet and beat for 2 mins. using a hand mixer at medium speed.

If using a stand mixer, I would mix at the lowest speed for 2 mins. or less.

Or the "original" WASC cake recipe by kakeladi:

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-599677-.html

Handy cake troubleshooting charts:

http://tinyurl.com/2p5bdu

http://tinyurl.com/32goqe

http://tinyurl.com/6c745g

HTH

Hmmm, I wonder if it was the Xlarge eggs? It's standard tha mixes and scratch recipes use large eggs unless it says otherwise. Could you have also mismeasure some of your other liquids?

I use x large eggs most of the time (and I add pudding) and I have never had a problem (touch wood!) Except when I got distracted and added the water twice! Caught it before I baked it though! Ya, I know, duh! If you've done it before with no problem then perhaps it was something as simple as that? Hmmm interesting....

thank you thank you thank.

i ran out of eggs for the rest of the cakes so this time bought large (usually get em at costco and don't have a choice), i have never had this problem before. Off to bake more and i will follow everything really closely...

I thought I might have added to much water.. but i didnt.. as long a 1 1/3 + 1 1/3 is 2 2/3... lol. ergh.

Jan thanks for the indepth info! super helpful

*crosses fingers*

ok I didn't sift, and used large eggs, only mixed on speed 1 ( okay 30 seconds on 2)

batter was MUCH thicker alil lumpy, but it'll be okay.

in the oven now, about to come out yay.

For anyone who's done the WASC in chocolate.....I used the link Jan provided and it said everything to sub out , etc. but nothing about the pudding? Common sense tells me to use chocolate instead of vanilla, but further down in that thread it said to still use vanilla extract. So, would you keep the vanilla pudding also, or switch that to chocolate? Okay....this is going to be my newest trial cake.....

i always use extra large eggs and never have a problem. i do though as jan says follow the directions on the box add all and mix for 30 seconds on low and then 2 minutes on medium. i have added pudding and an extra egg to the mix and this gives me a sturdier cake that come out just fine..........

just curious why cant you use x-large eggs?

I had the same problem and couldn't figure it out, was so bad that the wedding cake actually fell apart because the cake was so soft. I made another cake later with the only difference being that I had used fresh from the farm eggs the first time and store bought eggs the second. The second cake was firm and perfect. I was told that store eggs are older therefore firmer. I have noticed that fresh eggs often change the makeup of my recipes. Can't swear it was the eggs but that was the only difference in my experience.

Okay, so while it was my fault for using bigger eggs.... my cakes came out awesome the second time!

Now, something else I remember is that when i mixed the two original boxes.. one seemed darker. I just figured this was the color not getting mixed right, but because of the change in consistancy/ taste I think I got a bad box....and plus i messed up!!! User error... hmm. hehe.

I layed out my rememing mixes and they were all the same color...


here is a photo. hard to tell but the one on the left is the good one, one on right the "bad"

aundrea- I have used x-large eggs before with out incident... I don't know what happened, but I think to save my sanity, I will only use large.

Jan does a great job, and the links she provided give alil insight to the chemisty of baking.