I've not been able to do all that much baking since going back to uni, what with essays to write, translations to do and so on, but I've been making a few cakes and biscuits here and there when I can. A few weeks ago, when my parents came up to visit and they brought up some lovely treats for us, including this cake mix, which I got in my goodie bag at The Cake and Bake Show at Earl's Court in September. Now, I must admit that I've been a bit of a cake snob in the past, so I would rather make cakes from scratch than use a box mix. But I thought that I'd give this one a go and see what happened.
At the show in London, we tried some very lovely salted caramel cupcakes at the Sainsbury's stall, which were made from a ready mix, so I was in fact quite looking forward to how Betty Crocker's version would measure up.
The kit comes with a bag of vanilla cake mix - presumably including sugar, flour, baking powder and flavouring - a bag of vanilla icing sugar, a sachet of white chocolate chips for decoration and some cupcake cases. All that I needed to do was add oil, water and two eggs for the cakes and butter and water for the icing. Easy peasy!
Using the cake mix certainly saved time on measuring things out and it made a nice, smooth mixture. It had quite a strong vanilla flavour, but it wasn't overpowering at all after baking.
I ended up with a batch of nine good-sized buns - the sponge seemed to rise nicely and the kitchen really smelt lovely! All that remained to do was mix up the pink icing sugar with butter and water and ice them.
The icing wasn't as bright pink as was shown on the box, but that was rather a neon shade and perhaps not very appetising! I ended up with a more delicate pink shade with a very strong vanilla flavour, much stronger than the cake; but together, thankfully, the two flavours mixed well. I topped the cakes with the chocolate chips and served them to a peckish little sister and boyfriend, who had been hovering ready to test the finished article.
In the end, we agreed that they did still taste a little 'shop-bought' - there's definitely some sort of homemade taste that boxed mixes can't replicate exactly, but what it is, I'm not certain. But overall, Betty Crocker's cakes turned out well and I was quite impressed. The sponge was very light and actually they were quite moreish. All nine seemed to disappear quite swiftly!
My mum and sister have been testing more of Betty Crocker's and Sainsbury's cake mix ranges at home, apparently with great success. I think that, if I were to try more mixes, the Sainsbury's salted caramel would be the top of my list, or perhaps the red velvet ones.
In any case, I must definitely go and peruse the shelves in the homebaking aisle soon - university is starting to give me cake withdrawal! But Christmas is on its way and there should be plenty more baking opportunities of the festive variety in the works...
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