I'd like to get in on this (provided it's not too late). What a great way to find new recipes.

It's not too late...welcome aboard, Cheyanne25! The more the merrier

i too would like in on this...... want to be a scratch only baker..... sounds like fun...

Oh wow, this thread finally got noticed! Yayy.

And since someone mentioned cupcakes, how about we each bake atleast one cake and one cupcake of all the recipes we're trying.
I know cake recipes are easily adaptable to cupcakes, but maybe people may want to see how they turn out as cupcakes too.

It hardly takes any more effort to pop in a few cupcakes into the oven while baking the cake

And hows this schedule -
All recipe entries close on June 1st, and we start baking.
On june 15th, we post our results
By the 20th, we finish voting, and declare a favorite.
For the last 10 days, we try tweaking the favorite to become perfect, if there are common issues faced by everyone. We could also do this for a non favorite.

Does this sound good to you all?

No way I'm going to get through several recipes in two weeks. I have a full-time non-cake job, 2 toddlers, and cakes and cookies to make for actual people. In a month I can get through it. In two weeks......just not going to happen. Maybe I'll just read all y'all's results...

okay i really wanna do this but i don't have the money to buy ingredients. maybe get two or more people to do each recipe then post their review. that way we're only making one cake. you can make one cake layer and the rest cupcakes if you want. i understand people have businesses and families to run. I'm just broke

Even though I really like LostBaker's proposal, I don't think that 2 weeks is not enough time to complete all the recipes, and post results. I don't have much of a life right now but I'm guessing that most of you are very busy people. Maybe we can give it 3 weeks to do the sampling and post results. If people would like to tweek the recipe..we can make that optional..on their own time.

The last week of the month can be set aside to declare the favorite recipe and to submit the recipes for the following month. I do agree that selections should be made by the 1st of each month.

How's this sound to everyone? Is this a little more manageable?

BTW...Cupcakeshoppe..I feel your pain.

Sorry guys, I thought since each person would me making only one or two recipes, it would be ok. I'm on vacation from college, so sorry I didn't think about others being busy.
So three weeks it is

so how many recipes should we bake?
is there a scoring system as in points or just a general review? post pictures?

i suggest this, we have 8 or 9 recipes, right? people who wants to join will sign up to bake how many recipes they want. it's good if we can get more than one person to try one particular recipe that way they can compare how the recipe did. then we have three weeks to bake and post our review.

I don't see how a scoring points system would work all that well, as everyone has their own opinions and it is very subjective. I baked a cookie a couple of weeks ago that blondebaker gave a 9 in her weblog and I would've given it about a 2.....Why don't we just decide on the different things we want people to comment on.......like flavor, moistness, crumb, texture, etc.....whatever you want everyone to comment on for each recipe. That way we at least have a description of various elements, which is more helpful to me than a 6. Do ya think?

Lost baker.....no apologies necessary. You're enthusiastic and that's great. I just know I can't bake 8 or 9 recipes (or probably even 4 or 5) for fun in 2 weeks...... I have to do wedding cookies this week and am testing 3 orange cakes for a birthday...... so, I will squeeze a yellow cake in too. Maybe a couple more next week.

Giraffe - I always meant that everyone do 1 or 2 recipes. Anyway, everyone will be commenting on all those aspects, and give an overall rating on how they liked it, and try and post pictures of both cake, and cupcakes, so we can see for ourselves things like crumb etc. I know taste can be subjective, but we have to rely on others, since no one can bake soo many recipes on their own. Thats the purpose of this bake-of..
And wow, really you're busy

I'd love to participate in this as well. I don't care which recipe(s) I use...I've never baked a scratch yellow cake and would love to try. I will certainly be able to comment with authority if the recipes are foolproof..

WOW, giraffe11...you ARE very busy....You go girl .

As for the scoring system, maybe and do a combination of a cake characteristics..like crumb, flavor, moistness, and texture followed by an overall score ranging from "0" meaning absolutly disgusting to "10" meaning Super Yum . We should all try to post pictures, also, as previously stated.

I'm also in agreement that we all try to do at least 2 recipes.

How does this sound?

Ok, Y'all, let's make our deadline to submit our findings June 22nd (that's 3 weeks) and we can then tabulate the results and have the winner by June 25th. That gives us a week to get in the recipes for July (Cheesecake month).

Also...try to include in the your posted results what would make the cake better, if it needs to be improved. I'm not saying to rebake the cake..just make a suggestion based on the way it currently tastes.

How does this sound to everyone?

Hey maryjsgirl. On the strength of your recommendation and photos, I'm going to do your white on white as the middle tier of a 3 tier stack, with chocolate hazlenut mousse filling............. We'll see just how sturdy it is or is not! Ha Ha Ha......maniacal laughter..........

For the bakeoff I will try
1)Naty's recipe from Great American Cakes
2)Vanilla Buttermilk Recipe from SkyHigh
and 3)Sylvia Weinstock's Classic Yellow......


Plus still gotta try those three orange cakes and make wedding cookies! Ack!!! Glad DH and I both have lots of co-workers to dump cake on.

Heather

I'm game...this may get me to convert to scratch only baking. I would like to bake from scratch all the time but it's so inconsistent (for me). But if we could do this scratch bake off...every month...and I'd get better.

Where have I been all this time? All the recipes that Naty posted I use, they are also my favorite especially the Great American cake and The Cheese cake, very good. I am going to try the challenge as well. To be honest I am not good at whisking egg white and mixing it into the other ingredients. Any tips for those recipes that requires this method?????

Majormichel, the only tip I can give is to make sure the egg whites are at soft peak and to fold the whites into the base batter gently but completely.

BTW..welcome to all the new people of The Scratch Off!!! We're gonna have some fun

Alright, count me in. I've read and caught up. I would like to submit Serious_Cake's yellow cake recipe from her youtube video into the group. That is my GO-TO recipe for just about every flavor. I'm always looking to try new ones, though, but I have had awesome success with it. I will try two recipes for sure and maybe a third if I have time and ingredients.

Oh may I join???

Is it too late to enter my all time fave Rose Levy's All Occasion Downy Yellow Butter Cake?

Here's a link to the recipe
http://www.tastebook.com/recipes/632909-All-Occasion-Downy-Yellow-Butter-Cake
and heres a link to youtube videos showing Rose making the cake:

http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/2009/02/downy_yellow_butter_cake.html

I love this recipe but it doesn't work well for cupcakes and I'd love to add to my repertoire.

This is a fabulous red velvet recipe (it's the only one I use) from
Cakeman Raven(famous NY baker/decorator)
Red Velvet:

http://www.cakemanraven.com/recipe.htm

After having no luck finding a non-dry yellow cake recipe that was from scratch I modified the above recipe into a yellow cake recipe below. I simply took out the red food dye, cocoa powder. I also added baking powder. I have received lots of compliments on this yellow cake, my favorite have been from people I know in the bakery and restaurant biz saying it's the best scratch cake they have ever tried and those who say they normally don't care for cake coming back for seconds! It is really delish, very moist from the oil and buttermilk. I also get lots of compliments from Cakeman Raven's red velvet at the top. Not sure if you are supposed to post other's recipes but it is really good!

Cakeman Raven's Red Velvet I modified into a yellow and lighter cake:

Yellow Cake
Preheat oven to 350
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon table salt
Make sure to use both:
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 c sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk (well shaken)
1 1/2 c. good quality canola or veg. oil
1 teaspoon vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Mix the above together well for a couple minutes. Pour in greased and floured pans and bake until toothpick comes out clean..

Hope you all can try it. For extra cake tenderness, line the pans with parchment(not wax) paper.

I forgot to add the Yellow cake recipe above tastes like a scratch version of Duncan Hines, it is very light and moist. The plus of course is it does not have that nasty chemical taste of Duncan Hines!

This is a buttercream recipe from sewsweet on another page and after baking for 15 years is the best I have ever found:

Hope you can try it, it goes great with two cake recipes I posted on the great scratch off post. The greasiness/sliminess of the crisco is completely eliminated by the cornstarch and powdered milk.

Buttercream Icing II - Faux Fondant

http://whatscookingamerica.net/PegW/ButtercreamIcing.htm

The above buttercream recipe tastes better if you add an extra 1/3 cup of powdered milk (but not not more water) and an add an extra teaspoon of vanilla.

I'd love to jump on board too.... I'm searching for great scratch recipes and have already tried a few of these!

Are we going to be "assigned" which recipes to try?

No, we were all going to pick 2 or 3 and just let everyone know which ones you were going to do. We were hoping that we would have at least 2 people per recipe, but with the 4 or 5 late addition recipes, I'm not sure that we have enough participants to do that. I think we are up to 14 recipes?
Not sure. I already picked 3 to do.....can't remember which 3 I said (find on previous post) but I already have ingredients, so I'm going to stick to those.

Wiat wait for K8t.

I use the New Doubleday White Wedding Cake recipe and you gotta know I love Sylvia's yellow cake--irony of ironies--Sylvia's comes out white and Doubledays' comes out yellow---agghhhhh!!!

So I call Doubleday's Golden Cake.

I read on egullet that the list of ingredients is not copyrighted.
The instructions are copyrighted.
So I have Golden Wedding Cake paraphrased to avoid copyright infringement.

Golden Cake

6 cups sifted all purpose flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups milk at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 # butter or margarine or 1 1/3 cups margarine with 2/3 cups vegetable shortening
(the margarine is not vegetable spread)
4 cups sugar
8 eggs at room temperature
2 teaspoons lemon extract
2 tablespoons finely grated lemon rind (optional)

Preheat oven to 325. Sift flour with baking powder and salt and set aside. Combine milk and vanilla and set aside. Cream butter until light, add sugar gradually, continue to cream until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in lemon extract (and rind). Add dry ingredients alternately with milk beginning and ending with the dry and adding about one sixth of the total at a time. Beat just until smooth. Spoon into 1 ungreased 13" and 1 ungreased 7" pan lined on the bottom with wax or parchment paper filling no more than half full - this is a high-rising batter. Bake larger layer 60-65 mins until it pulls from the sides of the pan and is springy to the touch. Cool upright in pan on wire rack 10 mins then loosen and invert on rack peel off paper turn right side up and cool thoroughly. If you make 3 batches you get two 13", two 7" and two 10 " layers. Make cupcakes with any leftover batter.
This is from The New Doubleday Cookbook 1975.

Real good cake. And this recipe is not real fussy - can be halved. Excellent.

I want to join too!!!!

I also have a suggestion for the "Scratch Off" moderator On June 1st start a new thread with the first post containing a list (or link) to all recipes in the contest, the rules of the scratch off, the deadlines, and the factors on which the cake should be graded.

PS: to the person who had the question about copyrights and recipes A recipe or list of ingredients can not be copyrighted. What is protected by copyright is the authors unique directions and creative comments. So you can post the list of ingredients but you cant copy word-for-word someone elses directions.