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Did anyone ever try this trick on how to make boxed cake taste like it came from a bakery?
Step 1: Look at the directions on the cake mix
Step 2: Add one more egg (or add 2 if you want it to be very rich)
Step 3: Use melted butter instead of oil and double the amount
Step 4: Instead of water, use milk.
Step 5: Mix well and bake for the time recommended on the box.
Makes sense if you think about it but I'm wondering if anybody here has done this.
I would never use oil in a cake mix.
And as for that bake to the recommended time on the box, I always bake until the edges have pulled away from the sides and are kind of hard. If you taste bakery cake, it is not moist, but more dry. I like dry cake with a good frosting. You get the moisture from the frosting when you bite into it.
I don't know the rules about links to recipes, as this is the first recipe I'll be sharing here, so I'll just describe my favorite yellow cake recipe, and you can google it. It's the 1-2-3-4 cake from Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food. The New York Times has an easy-to-print copy of the recipe in an article by Emily Weinstein entitled "On Not Eating the Batter." It is simply the best cake I've ever made. I assure you it is worth the effort. I don't even bother separating the eggs every time I make it, and it has never turned out anything but wonderful.
The only assumptions I make are that you have the proper size cake pans, remember to grease and flour them, and use the correct oven temperature, which requires an oven thermometer.
My favorite way of "frosting" this cake is to use whipped cream and fruit, kind of like on Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. Or else chocolate whipped cream (let cocoa and confectioners dissolve for 1/2 hour in the bowl of cream you will eventually turn into whipped cream).
Good luck. This is so much better than box or bakery cake.
I don't generally like bakery cakes if it's from, say, a grocery store bakery. Specialty, stand-alone bakeries, in my experience, are more likely to have products that taste like real food and less like synthetic chemistry sets. My favorites are a patisserie in my area run by a small order of French nuns who donate the bulk of the proceeds to charity, and a Mexican bakery that makes glorious tres leches cakes.
I agree that a cake box "cake" will not taste the same as a specialty cake - I find the texture of the boxed cakes to be too light, not enough body, and too sweet, although they are good in a pinch. I like cakes that have a firmness to them and they are moist, too. I don't really go for the light airy cakes, but more of a moist pound cake texture. Cakes made with real wholesome ingredients, no chemicals or cheap additives - you can really taste the difference. I wish I was alive during the 1950s when people used to bake cakes at home a lot and from scratch, too. Real whipped cream, not that whipped topping. I like to look at vintage recipes from that era - I would say that was the Golden Age of Baking!
The tres/three refers to using 3 kinds of milk. Condensed, evaporated (or regular milk) and cream.
I never knew that!
Sour cream really does improve a cake mix. Please don't use oil! I can always taste it when people do.
Anything that adds substance - but subtracts sweetness, seems to work.
Whipped cream has to be one of the best frostings. There are others that are good, too.
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Tres leches cakes
