anyone can make a successful cake if using cake mixes.
Why buy the cake if anyone can make it? Admitting to
using a cake mix automatically devalues your work as a
cake decorator, a sentiment I find absolutely ridiculous.
On that same vein, can we say that a gold-medal winning
cake designer who has entered prestigious competitions
around the world isn't as valuable or skilled or worthy
because they decorated a Styrofoam cake? Nonsense.
I remember a wonderful home-based cake decorator
who I met years ago. After making hundreds of wedding
cakes for countless brides, her words of wisdom still
ring true: "If you crack an egg, then you're baking from
scratch." Of course, this rationalization was a feeble
attempt to lessen the cake mix guilt in all of us.
But it does make sense. How far can we take
this rationale?
There are some commercial cake mixes
that are a
"just add
water" cake
mix. There are
also some commercial
bakeries that purchase sheets
of frozen cake from food companies.
What's the limit? What's the standard?
But most importantly, what do you
feel most comfortable with in the
choices you face?
Typically, American clients
prefer a light, soft, and sweet
cake. When I teach cake
classes outside of the US,
I show them two cake
recipes in the class books,
and they look at me funny
when they see the word
cake mix. "What's that?"
Lucky for me, I also include
a wonderful chocolate
buttermilk scratch
cake recipe as well.
I just assumed
cake mixes
were prevalent
in every
country. After
finding the opposite to be true, I began to question the
history of cake mixes and why they seem to have such a
heavy presence in America.
After World War II, in the 1940s, food companies made
an attempt to market fast and easy food products to their
consumers. These were women pushed into the workforce
for the first time in history while the men went to war.
The food companies appealed to "Rosie the Riveter"
by offering ready-to-eat foods like TV dinners, frozen
waffles, and cake mix. The consumers bought. The Baby
Boomers ate. And so did the subsequent American
generations who followed.
Americans are a culture raised on cake mix. That's
typically what we know to be the definition of
cake. Soft, sweet, spongy breads slathered in
sweet butter cream icings. To give a typical
American the best scratch cake you've ever
made in your life,
the reaction
might be
mixed. Scratch
cakes are made from
simple ingredients with no
preservatives or additives that help create
the unrealistic fluffy sponge cake we have
been hypnotized by for decades. Although
cakes made from scratch are not dry, they
are dense, not all palettes can make this
distinction.
In college, I lived in Italy for a few
months taking classes, absorbing
the sights, but mostly eating.
Cake in Italy had a very different
definition than the American
counterpart. It was dense in
texture, filled with candied fruits
or nuts, and not as sweet, and
never accompanied by icings. That
being said, a big chunk of
Italian Panetone cake and
a cappuccino remains
one of my favorite food
memories of all time.
But my definition
of cake is still an
American sensibility.
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