The supermarket baking ingredients aisle, once filled with flours, sugars, dried fruits, nuts and flavorings, is facing extinction. Baking, like so many other styles of cooking, becomes a job of assembly, as packet mixes find their way into places where once Edmonds’ signature baking powder reigned supreme. It would be easy for this baking enthusiast to decry bagged cake mix, but, in fact, I find that having a package of classic golden butter cake in the pantry is a useful – and wise – decision. It’s not that I can’t tell the difference between the butter cake recipe I made from scratch and a packaged version of butter cake, but it can sometimes be counted on to help young people kids to get into cooking – it’s just a mix. and bake – and provides an instant answer for dessert for unexpected guests.
Bag cakes have had a long way to go. They were conceived after World War I by a Pittsburgh baker, John Duff, who recognized the need in his local market to help poor wartime families put cake on the table. It cut costs by reducing the ingredients needed to make a cake, as well as the preparation time. Duff’s first patented gingerbread mix contained wheat flour, molasses, sugar, shortening, salt, baking soda, whole egg powder, ginger and cinnamon . Sales were good at first, but they quickly plateaued as 1930s cooks struggled with conscience and convenience. Adding water didn’t mean making a cake by hand. The problem was solved by removing the dried egg from the mixture and having to use fresh eggs. Pulling an egg out of the pantry, cracking it into the bowl, and whisking the mixture was enough validation for the cook to say, “It’s homemade.” I remember visiting food towns in Mississippi in the early 90s and staying there. Guest rooms. Every morning we were greeted by smiling hosts who, after working in the kitchen making fresh muffins, proudly showed me their homemade pastries. They came from packets, sure, but to them they were truly homemade, and the idea of having the individual ingredients on hand and cooking them from scratch was simply a foreign concept.
In recent decades, bagged cake mixes have been seen as an alternative for poor people or lazy cooks. They were nothing compared to the delights of an Alison Holst banana cake or a foolproof sponge cake (which often failed for inexperienced cooks). Everything has changed as manufacturers respond to the needs of today’s consumer who just wants everything to be easy, and now! Wet mixes that only require pouring into molds and baking have arrived, and in the traditional dry mix category, anything chocolatey reigns supreme. Quicker than cake, Double Chocolate Cake in a Mug is a single-serving cake mix that’s quicker than muffins and can be microwaved while you prepare the cup of tea for unexpected guests. Next came chocolate fudge brownies and rich chocolate cake.
While these quick, chocolatey products are a welcome addition to the cake mix market, they’re not single-handedly leading the acceptance revolution: it’s decorating mania! It all depends on what’s happening above. The creative aspect of the topping took the “I made it” bar up a notch or two, just like adding eggs did in the 1930s. To think about choosing frosting or icing – what intensity of color or flavor to have, and to design and make, or buy, bespoke decorating has become our get out of jail free card, confirming in our own at least, that we did it ourselves . It seems that convenience trumps the guilty conscience.
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This apricot cream tart uses bagged cake mix in the base and canned apricots in the filling, so it’s a convenient recipe using cupboard ingredients.
