Hi all,

For those of you who aren't southerners, a Pea Picking cake is a yellow box mix cake with 15oz can of mandarin oranges(with juice), 1/3 cup of oil, and 3 eggs in it. The topping is coolwhip with a box of instant vanilla pudding mix with crushed pineapples in it.

And now to my question: Has anyone made this from a scratch mix? I have some cake recipes, but they are butter cakes. I would prefer an oil-based yellow cake recipe to use as all my butter cakes take a change for the worse when I refrigerate them.

Has anyone made the Ultimate Butter Cake (from *********) with oil instead of butter?

To explain my butter cake predicament: the cake gets really firm and lose their softness when I refrigerate them. This happens especially with pound cakes :(

I do have a lovely cupcake recipe that uses cake flour, oil, and butter, do you think I could use all purpose flour and it would translate well to a sheet-style cake? I would be subbing out the milk and sour cream with the mandarin oranges(and their liquid) with a 1:1 ratio. I do know that sour cream makes things moist, but these are so moist, light and fluffy already that it's almost like eating air sometimes, lols.

This is the cupcake recipe I've used: http://www.cupcakeproject.com/2011/09/ultimate-vanilla-cupcake-test-baked-by.html

I was hoping to not use a boxed mix, but I bought one anyways. The cake is for this weekend and just for me and my family, no customers involved (I'm a hobby baker).

Although i love butter it does make a cake a bit drier, have you tried substituting margarine? I use Stork here in the UK and it makes a lovely moist cake x

i've never made this cake -- but i don't know what a scratch mix is?

from the rest of what you said you mean from scratch without using a cake mix -- yes?

and who does this ultimate butter cake? this is the second question about it in as many days -- it did not google up for me --

@cakebaby2 Wouldn't margarine make it dense like butter?

@-K8memphis The ubc cake is a paid recipe (now anyways, I got it from before she started charging) from baking 911.com, not sure why it bleeped out the website name in my first post. And yes I meant from scvratch, not a scratch mix. typing while holding a baby is diffivult, lols .

Scratch will be a bit denser than box but the margarine is deffo the way to go for a light moist cake. I'll take a sideways step now and hope a pro like K8 comes back 

I ended up using a box mix since I wanted something lighter. I did end up making chocolate cupcakes from scratch. I didn't like them much, but everyone said they were really good and ate more of those than the cake, lols. I used the chocolate cupcake recipe from the cup cake blog site I posted above. I loved her vanilla ones, but the chocolate ones... not so much. They sank in the middle, pulled away at the sides like a pound cake, dry on the edges and were fudgy (yet cooked all the way) in the middle. The only modification I did was substitute butter pecan coffee creamer (non-dairy) for the vanilla extract (2 tablespoons). Next time I'll use the one from epicurious that everyone raves about on here.

On a good note though, I did try making ganache for the first time and it worked out really well!  Move over buttercream, ganache is here! now to pour a big glass of milk and try to clean the bowl with a sponge instead of my finger....