Hi everyone. Does any of you bakers use a commercial cake mix for baking a cake? like a sponge cake mix? (I'm not talking about BC or DH, it's the type of mix that's sold to bakeries.) Did you have sucess with it or do you prefer baking cakes from scratch?

Some of my flavors are commercial mixes and others I bake from scratch. I find many of the commercial mixes I've used to be comparable in taste and texture to my scratch cakes, but I'm sure it depends on the mix. The ones I use most are ones I buy from the woman who taught me how to decorate cakes - she also has a cake supply store - and I'm not sure what distributor she gets them from. I've also used some of the Puratos mixes (although I'm not sure they make exactly the same ones here in Mexico as in the US). When used according to directions, they're quite good.

thanx marianna. I'm yet to try the cake mix that I bought. You really encouraged me to. I really hope that it turns out good. I guess those mixes are more predictable than than the ones you make from scratch. but my question is does the ingredients have to be at room temperature?

Previous threads on this subject:

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopic-677321-0-days0-orderasc-.html

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-596517-.html

HTH

Thanks for pointing out those links, JanH. I knew there had been lengthy discussions about this, but I couldn't quite put my finger on them. But I think those discussions were at a more general level of scratch vs. mix. The question here was more about the commercial mixes used in bakeries. I have problems with the store-bought mixes like Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines, because they seem to have too much leavening to hold up under the kind of decoration I use, not because I don't like the taste. The idea of doctored store-bought cake mixes seems fine to me, but I've never had occasion to use them, so I can't really give an opinion. But I've used the commercial bakery-type mixes extensively and they seem to come out just like my scratch cakes. It's as if I were to make my own cake mixes by just mixing together the dry ingredients in bulk and adding the wet ingredients as I made each individual cake. In fact, now that I thank about it, that might not be a bad idea!

Did find some older threads on bulk commercial cake mixes (with opinions):

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-618661.html

And surfed for recipe adjustments to DH cake mixes when used for tiered or larger cakes:

http://ww.duncanhines.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22133

There have been threads on that too...

Master cake mix thread with reviews:
(Thread is corrupted so recipe is in following thread.)

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-68583-.html

Updated master mix thread:

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-579223-.html

Homemade basic cake mix:

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-49589-.html

Small batch homemade cake mix recipes:

http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/cake-mixes-from-scratch-and-variations/Detail.aspx

HTH

Noura80, I always prep all my recipe ingredients prior to mixing (so they're all ready to go and at room temperature).

HTH

Yes, I forgot to say that about the getting everything to room temperature before starting: I always do it. Butter mixes better, eggs beat up better and if anything else is cold, it cools these two ingredients, too. Sorry to take so long to reply, but I read all the threads you posted here, JanH. What a revelation and HOW USEFUL! Thank you so-o-o-o-o much!!!

Thanx Jan again for the useful links. I will definitely read them again.

On a different note, I'm not usually lazy about posting new threads without searching for the topic in question. But somehow the search button on the main page doesn't direct me to the threads if I searched for a certain topic. I instead get the dreaded message "page not found". hmmf dunno what's going on there.