Returning to our regular programming,
There's a rumor that the sale of cake mixes increased by humongous amounts once a fresh egg was required for the mix, rather than a mix using dried egg powder. Because it made the Stepford wives feel like they were actually cooking, and not cheating. That rumor is false, according to Snopes. Ner. What a pity. It's a good one.
But hey, I'm a lazy mix mumma all the way, and it never feels like cheating. I wouldn't know a home made cake if it came up an sat next to me on the bus. I have made muffins from scratch a few times but the recipe required gratuitous amounts of of canola oil. So I'm not entirely sure they count.
How simple and self satsifying are cake mixes? Many, many easy peasy varieties. Icing and sprinkles and paper cake cases included. Even pre-made icing, if you're Betty Crocker inclined. Add an egg, a bit of milk, a splash of oil and mix. Most of them you don't even need an electric mixer for these days, you can use a wooden spoon. Ahh, lazy SAHM-ness at it's best. No, scrap that. Make that total awesomeness for time poor frazzled mummies. And much easier to make with a toddler 'helping' than multi step scratch cake.
And no one can stuff up a mix cake. Right?
Wrong.
I have a friend, who we will call CourtneyB. AKA Super Mummy. She has two kids under three, yet still manages to show up to playgroup with a delicious batch of baby cakes she just "whipped up that morning". Baby cakes that look just like the one on the packet mix box. Quite like this.
Picture proudly stolen from White Wings website.
The Chop and I endeavored to make the same cakes just the other day. Ours looked a bit more like this.
*Ahem*
Oh dear. Somebody call Cake Wrecks. Not only did they not rise, they actually sunk and flattened. The mix was too runny, probably because I got bored and decided it was thick enough after two minutes of stirring. And I just can never get the hang of dropping the mix neatly into tiny cake cases, using two teaspoons like conductor's batons. It goes everywhere. Hence the burnt and blackened paper cake cases.
The icing was another matter altogether. Maybe I added too much water...? I dunno, but it was runny. Very runny. And lumpy. Just a little lumpy. It's a good thing the cake cases were burnt like they were. It kept the runny icing in.
The sprinkles, we can totally blame on the Chop. Honest. Unfortunately, I have no one but myself to blame for the uneven icing. See the cupcakes in the front left hand corner, with no icing at all? Hey, it's difficult to spread or apply or whatever the terminology for icing is when it's that runny, OK?
Ah, well. They all got eaten, that I can guarantee. I think the most disturbing part of this particular mix cake failure was that the cake mix and icing were both a lurid shake of bright pink, and smelled like strawberry Hubba Bubba. Surely that can't healthy? The list of numbers on the ingredients panel looked like a phone directory. Whatever.
Foodie blog, this ain't. But you already knew that. Right?