AIBU to use a cake mix?

[Nyshift]

Would I be unreasonable to make a cake using a cake mix for a party? A relative is visiting the uk and has fond memories of family baking. I thought I was making a fruit cake but someone else is making that, I’ve been asked to make a chocolate cake. I’m not very good at that kind of baking 🤣 so AIBU to use a nice mix and pass it off as home made?

Absolutely use one ,tart up the decoration and I doubt anyone will know .

That's fine but be a bit wary, last time someone I know used one of these the cake tasted really salty and there were a few comments on it.

Use a Mary Berry all in one chocolate sponge recipe. It is just as easy and will taste better.

Use a Betty crocker cake mix and make your own icing.

You would be very very unreasonable, yes. Whatever you do, do not do it as it will certainly end in trouble.

I use this recipe too! Its the best fudgy chocolate cake and always turns out perfect

Betty Crocker, extra egg and do your own icing

You can, but they’re just a pre mix of dry ingredients that you still have to add other ingredients to in order to make a cake. You may as well just use flour, baking powder, sugar etc and follow a simple recipe. The all in one mentioned up thread would do.

Go for it. Betty crocker is your friend.
I avoid UPFs as a general rule, but if I had to produce a no-chance-of-failing cake, I'd make an exception for BC.

I second Mary Berry or the BeRo all in one cake mix - super easy. I have a great chocolate ganache recipe if you want it

Using cake mix is U (unnecessary) ! You can easily use a recipe from Mary Berry, Delia (knows what tastes good and delivers a working recipe), Nigella (good for simplicity and good flavour) or any other established cook with a published book.

Cake mix does not have any special ingredients to ensure success or good flavour. It is simply pre-measured dry ingredients which you probably have in your cupboards right now: flour, sugar, salt, bicarbonate of /baking soda.

As per @SilenceInside, cake mix is not really any help because you still need to add other ingredients like eggs, milk/cream, butter, et al. AND these 'liquid' ingredients are the ones which make a cake rich, moist and luscious.

There are added extras to mixes that mean the cake is less likely to fail, will rise consistently and look better (for a non-baker that doesn't get a lot of practice). Obviously, if you're a confident Baker, you wouldn't look twice at a mix.

Chocolate cake is vile. Make a yummy cake of your choice.

Chocolate cake mix ingredients:
Enriched Flour Bleached (WHEAT flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), Sugar, Cocoa Processed with Alkali, Corn Syrup, Leavening (baking soda, monocalcium phosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate). Contains 2% or Starch, Modified Palm Oil, Carob Powder, Propylene Glycol Mono and Diesters of Fatty Acids, Distilled Monoglycerides, Salt, Dicalcium Phosphate, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Xanthan Gum, Cellulose Gum, Artificial

All-in-One Chocolate Cake Recipe (Delia Smith)

Chocolate cake tends to be quite dry and tasteless to be honest

No one said it was necessary.

However it is usually a bit quicker and a bit less stress free if I cannot any afford to make even the slightest mistake at all, due to time etc.

The Betty Crocker Devil’s Food cake mix IS delicious and also very rich/fudgy.

The Betty Crocker Milk chocolate mix is lighter, fluffier but also very lovely.

Also - FYI you only add eggs, oil and water. So not all the other ingredients you listed.

And I am not saying this because I can’t bake - I am recommending this solution to this specific occasion where @Nyshift is a bit worried about the outcome.

There is no shame in using a cake mix if you feel a bit under pressure.

Haha, not at all! Just grate some chocolate yourself on the top to make ot look a little rustic, and they'll be none the wiser!

Betty Crocker is my best pal, that chocolate cakes to die for.

Than clearly you haven't had the right one 😉

I don’t think there’s a huge amount of extra work in just getting the ingredients together yourself. As pp’s mentioned above, Mary Berry’s all in one cake is fantastic. I make her chocolate fudge cake a few times a year and it’s honestly the easiest thing. I don’t do complicated😆

YANBU but I would probably buy one as I am a rubbish baker. I can cook but I am too haphazard to be a baker as it has to be so precise

They're a rip off. Just use 250g or sugar, butter, SR flour and 4 eggs.
Cream butter and sugar first and whisk the eggs. Then gradually add eggs and flour to butter mix. That plus a bit of vanilla and a TSP baking powder.
Then add a splash of milk to loosen.

Cook for about 35 mins on gas mark 5. Or until a skewer comes out clear.

Well I was thinking more of what OP was proposing

I have had the 'right' ones, Ive had all the good ones, posh ones, Mary, Nigella, I made an olive oil one once and a mashed potato one once, they of course were not dry or tasteless and if Im honest I dont really like chocolate cake so may be slightly coloured from that. I make them for others rather than myself.

If you do use a cake mix, the supermarket own brands tend to have less of the unusual ingredients in them than the brand like Betty Crocker, so for example the Sainsburys chocolate sponge mix has:

Fortified Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin), Sugar, Palm Oil, Fat Reduced Cocoa Powder (7%), Raising Agents: Potassium Hydrogen Carbonate, Glucono-delta-lactone, Monocalcium Phosphate, Sodium Carbonates; Rapeseed Oil.

So, just flour, sugar, palm oil, cocoa powder, raising agents and rapeseed oil. You add eggs and water.

Betty Crocker Devils Food Cake beats any home made recipe I have ever tried. Add chocolate fudge frosting and smarties and you can’t go wrong.

Yes. I do a lot of baking for a charity once a year and always use this as it's cheaper than buying the ingredients. I am always asked for the recipe 😂