Do Americans really use packet cake mix as much as recipes suggest?

[breatheslowly]

I keep on seeing recipes that involve packet cake mix. I know you can buy it here, but I am not aware of anyone using it here in the UK. Do Americans really use it?

Step by step pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkin.

www.pickyourown.org/pumpkinpie.php

Cornmeal pancakes are also very good:

www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/cornmeal-pancakes

Yum:

Sugar, Enriched Flour Bleached (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil, Modified Corn Starch, Propylene Glycol Monoesters of Fatty Acids, Baking Soda, Salt, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Dextrose, Monocalcium Phosphate, Distilled Monoglycerides, Dicalcium Phosphate, Maltodextrin, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Datem, Monoglycerides, Xanthan Gum, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Aluminum Sulfate, Yellow 5&6, Nonfat Milk.

That's betty crocker yellow cake mix. So appetising.

But I don't understand why it would be hard to source the baking ingredients? Surely flour, eggs and butter/margarine are readily available? And baking powder?

Another American here, brought up on Jiffy corn muffins.
It is rather a swizz, isn't it, and rather horrific if you read the actual ingredients as ouryve as shown. I think it has to do with the cultural concept of rosy view of woman at home baking, mixed with hours required to work in most jobs in America. It is marginally quicker to make a cake from a box than it is from scratch. From a box is a 'fresh' product and warm from the oven, thus better than a shop bought cake.

I think also it was brought in in my parent's generation in the fifties, and was considered a modern convenience, thus better.
Even in Britain there has been a revival of people doing 'proper' baking.
Think I used a box cake once since I left the US 20 years ago and found it way too sweet!

Jennifer Did you ever try the Jiffy blueberry muffins? With the weird, dehydrated, strangely oversweet 'blueberries'?? My tastebuds are recoiling at the memory!

We always make Mickey Mouse pancakes. Why bother making pancakes and not Mickey some up for the kiddies?

I am also a bit confused about making a 'good cake from scratch' bring hard. You need flour, eggs, sugar, butter and maybe baking powder or bicarb.... These things aren't that hard to find in America are they?

I haven't made Mickey pancakes before, but may well try next time. Though the effort will probably be lost on my 18 month old!

Maybe it's hard to get specific ingredients like different types of sugar, ground almonds etc?

I love the variety of choices for sugar that French supermarkets have compared to ours. so maybe American ones are worse?

Can't SR flour be made by adding bicarb of soda or baking soda (can never remember which one) to plain flour?

Visualise You will need to add whipped cream + fruit for eyes and whipped cream or chocolate sauce for smile. Your toddler will either find that irresistible or terrifying.

It is easy to find basic ingredients for baking in most US supermarkets. It's just that only a minority are interested.

I'm American and I almost never use mixes EXCEPT for a few. The few I would use are bundt cake, pound cake, brownies, and maybe angel food. There is a really good Krusteaz lemon bar too. When i do make cake from scratch, it is invariably chocolate cake. However, since I have diabetes now and am going low carb, I'm not making any cakes.

In answer to the OP - yes they do.

A typical supermarket will have at least half an aisle devoted to boxed mixes and frosting, and a tiny bit for base ingredients.

Then it seems just wrong for the main ingredient you add to be vegetable oil.

My DD made a red velvet cake, from a packet, at the weekend. I can't remember the make but it was one of the nicest cakes I've ever had.

(American here). Canadian friend taught me how to make Pancakes (European or North American). I had no idea it was so simple!!

On the other hand, self-rising flour was a huge novelty to me. We always added baking powder to plain flour. My mom always made pumpkin pie by boiling our own pumpkins (1st November ritual). But the evaporated milk (ugh). I have learnt to get by without that, at least.

I think if people look at that ingredients list on the cake mix box, they assume it would be far too difficult and complicated to bake a cake from scratch.

I remember going to a Thanksgiving dinner, cooked by an American colleague of DH's, and everything was out of a tin (she had asked her mum to send it over). Green beans, mac and cheese, pumpkin pie filling......she said it wasn't authentic otherwise.

I thought it was because they use the cup system for measuring which is too imprecise for baking?

I use cup measuring all the time for baking and my cakes are lovely, 1 cup is 4 oz but the gist for cakes is ratios not so much oz's.

frogs it's her base I think.

Why does mac and cheese come in a box?

I never use cake mix but OMG you MUST try the American Brownie mix they sell at Cosco. Just awesome. So good I am tempted to try the Butternilk pancake mix as well...

I use the cup measuring system and everything turns out perfect - it's just as precise as weighing.

Mac and cheese comes in a box because only the artificial ingredients can render it the 'traditional' radioactive orange colour. I remember a neighbour from Alabama making us mac and cheese from scratch at her house when I was a kid - I never knew it could be so delicious!

We do the trashy version of Thanksgiving (although not stooping so low as to use frozen green beans). So canned pumpkin for the pumpkin pie, french's dried onions, value cranberry jelly, marshmallows...

We do the proper full Monty purism for Christmas according to Delia.

I wouldn't have the time to put the Christmas effort into thanksgiving and it's nice to do something different for each feast.

I am not a mac and cheese fan (and I hate the boxed stuff) but DH makes a 3-cheese mac and cheese from scratch that is really good.

I may be wrong here but I think self-rising flour is more difficult to get outside the South. It is a staple for biscuits.

For me because I don't bake very often, the mixes produce the right result every time. Baking is a science and one wrong move or measure and your result can taste like crap. I have not had great luck in getting it right when trying to bake from scratch. Maybe if I did it often then that would change.

But what does a cake mix do? How do you use it, and which part of normal cake-making does it replace?

I'm still not getting this - presumably you still have to add eggs and milk, and maybe butter? So how is it easier to mix eggs with the contents of a packet than with flour and sugar?

[dim]

Baking is a science and one wrong move or measure and your result can taste like crap. I have not had great luck in getting it right when trying to bake from scratch

That's what Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker want you to think.

TBH, a poor baking technique is unlikely to result in food that tastes bad. It might look bad and have an unusual texture, but it will be perfectly edible. You learn for the next time too.

I think there is a 1950s fascination with science and technology that has sustained through the generations. Domestic technology has lead homemaker success to mean completely effortless (picture the 1950/60s commercials for kitchen appliances showing the homemaker waiting on her husband, perfectly made up, serving a cocktail to him before his dinner). Add to that an insecurity of being able to serve up a nutritionally balanced meal in five minutes flat without breaking a sweat.

Kraft Mac 'n Cheese is easier than the real thing. It takes less than 10 minutes and you get exactly the same thing every time. It takes 20-25 minutes to make it from scratch and sometimes it isn't what you were hoping for. With boxed meals, the bar is so low that you can't fail. Of course it doesn't win in a blind test, but if you believe that you are incapable of making a white sauce, the it is easy to reach for the box.