Red Velvet Throwndown

I’ll come right out and say it: I am a cake mix snob. Having being raised in a household where everything was baked from scratch and store bought baked goods were rare: cake mix never made an appearance.

What’s with the sudden confession you wonder? Well recently in my area, a new cupcake store opened. The cupcake craze never really hit Montreal to the level that it did in the rest of North America. When I was living in Toronto, it was quite common to see cute cupcake boutiques throughout the city. Every review I ever read of Montreal cupcake places were always mixed and never really inspired me to go out of my way to sample them. But this time, I bought into the hype and decided to try it. My primary intention was to do a review and maybe even some reconnaissance for my own future aspirations. So, after our visit, I returned to work and opened the box with my two cupcakes with anticipation. My first indication that something was ‘off’ was the color of the red velvet. Red velvet is known to be a deep red color, this cupcake was distinctly pink. I put this aside and took a bite. As I chewed, a realization hit me: this was definitely cake mix. I came to the same conclusion after sampling the chocolate cupcake as well.

I’ll be honest, I felt let down. When paying 2.75$ a cupcake, I expect a product that’s worth that much. When I splurge on baked goods I want to be happy with my purchases. In this case, I definitely wasn’t.

Can you tell which is which?

So, in the spirit of the competitiveness of super bowl weekend, I decided to have a cupcake throw down. I would make a batch of cake mix red velvet cupcakes and one from scratch. The purpose was to see if my family could pick out which of the two were homemade and which were not. An immediate issue was that red velvet cake mix is not readily available in Canada. Luckily, a co-worker was going down to the States and was able to get a box for me. For the first time ever, I went into the mix section of my grocery store and searched for cream cheese icing in a can. I have to admit, I was crossing my fingers that no one would see me carrying it. I was treating it more like a bomb then a container of icing!

So, as the color had been the first alarm bell when eating my original bought cupcakes, the color of the mix immediately stood out. The batter came together very red, which immediately proved that this was not the mix that the shop had been using. I had no problem matching the mix to my homemade batch which was helpful. I iced mine in a cream cheese icing from scratch and the stage was set.

Now, before I let you know what the results were: let’s discuss the usage of mixes in the baking industry. It actually is quite a normal practice. Your local bakery may be using mixes and you wouldn’t even know. They’re much more cost and time effective then buying the ingredients and the labor for putting it all together. I found some interesting articles about this debate that you can read here.

Also, as I had to remind myself: if cake mixes didn’t taste good, people wouldn’t use them. Many people may have been raised with this as the norm and this is what they think of when they think of baking. Plus, a mix will ensure a more consistent product then when you are making something from scratch. I don’t think that cake mixes taste bad, I can just identify when they are being used. The Ghirardelli brownie mix available at Costco makes a pretty awesome brownie that I won’t turn down if offered! A friend of mine had a family tradition of making cherry chip cupcake mix for her birthday every year and they were quite good. Another plus? One of the major differences I noticed when using a mix was the efficiency in time. It only took me 5 minutes to put together the mix versus 30 minutes for my home made ones.

Which ones are made with mix?

So, drumroll please: my whole family picked out the ones made from mix right away as the one they didn’t like. To be honest, I was surprised. I thought I would have atleast some people preferring the mix. The difference came down to the mix ones being oilier, not tasting as good, and the icing leaving a ‘greasy’ mouth feel.

Now, this was a small experiment of 7 people. After the research I had done I was ready to let my first negative thoughts go. Mixes are part of industry practice and socially accepted, so why should I hold it against this place? Plus, I wasn’t able to exactly replicate the cupcake that I had bought due to the color difference of my mix version.

The thing that would stop me from going back to this place was apparent after I visited their website. They advertise that they bake everything from fresh ingredients. What it comes down to for me is: using mixes is one thing but false advertising is another. 2.75$ to be mislead that a product is made from fresh ingredients is a little bit too much for me to swallow.

What are your thoughts on cake mix? Do you have a favorite?