deglazing.com

  vs  

Recently, I saw a post over at www.accidentalhedonist.com talking about whether or not boxed cake mixes really were more “convenient” than from scratch baking.  In the interest of science I wanted to find out what the difference really was.  I have to say right upfront that I enjoy baking, but I don’t make it my mission to convert others.  I know some people hate to cook and bake and you know what that’s fine with me.  I am okay with everyone not making things from scratch, I understand time constraints and lack of interest.  The question posed here is how convenient are boxed cake mixes? 

Let’s start with the obvious - the simplicity of ingredients.  The photo on the left is, of course, the boxed cake mix and a its three extra ingredients.  The photo on the left is the classic yellow cake that I would make with it’s eight ingredients.  Don’t let the lack of ingredients fool you, making a cake from scratch does take time.  To be fair to the experiment I gathered all ingredients and did the measuring once the time clock began.  I wanted to look at exactly how long it would take you to measure all of your ingredients together and make the cake.       

So how long did it take me?  Well, let’s take the bake time out of the mix, baking times are usually pretty standard across the board.  The time it took to get the ingredients together and into the pan was what I was truly interested in.  The boxed mix took all of 5 minutes to put together.   The thing that took the longest with the boxed mix was the stirring, a total of 2 1/2 minutes.  Now for the standard yellow cake, this recipe is a classic.  The standard cake took with all of its additions and extra time beating almost 20 minutes to complete.  Now is 15 minutes a lot of time, I would say no normally.  But in the case of cooking and baking, I think 15 minutes is a lifetime for many people. 

How about cost?  Let’s say you have never baked in your life and don’t have cake flour and vanilla extract in your cupboard, let’s just play devil’s advocate.  Let’s say you had absolutely none of the ingredients.  The classic recipe with it’s cake flour, baking powder, salt, butter, granulated sugar, eggs, vanilla, and buttermilk, would set you back around $20.00. (Keep in mind this is with real vanilla, not imitation.)  The boxed mix would run around $7.00 with the box costing $1.50, oil around $3.00, and eggs $3.00 a dozen. 

So, I leave it up to you to determine if you think boxed cake mixes are more “convenient”.  Stay tuned tomorrow for the blind taste-test with these two cakes.  (I am going to use the same frosting on both and see which one my cake taste-testers choose - Thanks guys at Tundra!)