Too often cakes and other deserts are made to appeal to the eye and lack flavor. I have long maintained it is hard to find a good Western dessert in the region from Athens to Tokyo. (Local deserts are fine of course.)
Here you go:
longhair75’s chocolate cake recipe:
2 ½ cups flour
2 cups sugar
½ cup hershey’s cocoa
2 rounded teaspoons baking soda
1 cup soured milk (add a teaspoon of white vinegar to whole milk and stir. Trust me)
1 cup vegetable oil
½ teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
1 cup hot water (add this last)
Combine all dry ingredients, then add the liquid ingredients. Pour into a 9x13 floured baking dish and bake in a pre heated 350 degree oven until a toothpick comes out dry, approximately 45 minutes.
I guess I’m a snob. Generally I tell people I “just don’t like cake,” but the truth is I do like cake, it’s just that I think roughly 99% of all cake sucks.
Costco cakes don’t taste disgusting. They aren’t delicious, but they are sweet and don’t have any bad flavors. That makes them a lot better than most supermarket cakes. They are attractively priced, too.
I just retired, and whenever I start to miss the human interaction, I make a mental list of Things I Don’t Miss.
You just gave me a big one: frosting.
Specifically, the weekly mandatory “We’re all going to sing Happy Birthday to Marcy in the conference room! Chucko got the cuyuuutest sheet cake from Safeway with little I think they’re monkeys in this huge jungle scene so every massive piece that’ll get forced on everyone will have an inch of horrible, cloying frosting on it!”
Happytree, I share your sentiments. I’m not a cake snob either, but the typical grocery store cake doesn’t do much for me. Especially the sheet cakes. However, I have found that Krogers does make an OK German chocolate cake. And back in the day, I enjoyed Publix’s carrot cake. It’s been awhile since I’ve tried it though.
Not to change the subject too much, but I miss Entenmann’s cakes. I don’t care for their other products, but the lemon iced cake is off the chain. And while the Louisiana crunch cake is just OK all by itself, it becomes delightful with fresh strawberries and vanilla ice cream. Every time I go to the grocery store, I look to see if these offerings are available. They never are. It’s like Entenmann only produces those dry-ass donuts (I am kind of a donut snob).
https://hummingbirdbakery.com/blogs/hummingbird-bakery-blog/cake-storage-tips
That short shelf life for the frosting is a problem…cakes might sit a couple days before someone gets around to buying them.
I used to make frosting with cream cheese, butter, vanilla, and powdered sugar, using an electric mixer to blend. A six year old could make it. If the bakery were willing to sell an unfrosted cake, hmm. Or they could drop everything and frost it for you while you wait. The good thing about tasty frosting is it doesn’t go bad if you eat it right away 
If it’s just about flavor and you don’t care what it looks like, that’s one thing. A lot of people want things written on it or flowers made of frosting etc. The more flavorful frostings may not be ideal for decorating, as my mom’s use of Crisco may indicate. She did it as a hobby, not a profession, and she probably also used Crisco to economize. Pros may have other workarounds.
The few times I’ve had it, fondant was nothing to write home about. So there’s another example of sacrificing flavor for other considerations.
Commercial bakeries use “buttercream” icing that comes in five-gallon buckets. I doubt it is even your regular Crisco at the base of it. Whatever vegetable oil and/or animal fat is cheapest is mixed with a chemistry set of additives as “stabilizers” to increase the shelf life of the icing. I truly doubt the commercial icing is even flavored.
This icing is colored with paste coloring, so as to not change the texture of the finished product. A lot of times, the icing itself isn’t even colored. The cake top is colored with an air brush, and a prepackage set of cheap toys is set on the cake for the theme.
~VOW
I have worked many, many weddings, and eaten at least a hundred different wedding cakes. The Publix cakes are as good or better than most cakes made by professional bakers.
Now there are definitely individual custom-order cakes that are better than Publix cakes, wedding or just the regular cakes they sell every day. Although Publix cakes aren’t too bad. But weddings cakes - people should save themselves some money and get it from Publix. They must put some extra care or something into making the wedding cakes. It’s not just one of their regular cakes with an extra price tag. Not where I live at least.
Edit: Costco’s chocolate cake with chocolate frosting is very very good. IDK about their other cakes. Their baked goods in general are quite good - bread, cake, cupcakes, croissants, Danish, cookies. I’m talking about the stuff they bake themselves, not “Kirkland” branded items.
Being allergic to palm/coconut/tropical crap, I can no longer risk eating commercial baked goods, or even the vast majority of box mixes and prepared frosting.If I want something, I pretty much have to make it myself. On the plus side, I can say that it really doesn’t take that much longer to make something from scratch cakewise than it does to dump a box and add a couple ingredients IF you happen to have the base ingredients around.
Granted, training helps - but some principals apply - I keep the various sized little side bowls [I have 4 oz and 8 oz, and then it jumps up to 32 oz in recyclable fibre <um, waste sugar cane pulp I think> to premeasure the dry ingredients in] and premeasure the ingredients, then it is a matter of just dumping stuff into the mixing bowl. It helps to keep things straight [oops, did I already add the baking powder, did I forget the sugar …] To get a better quality product, with ingredients you can trust, allergen free, it is worth a bit of effort. I am absolutely ashamed to admit, I can take the 3 recipes off the back of the cocoa powder can [sauce, frosting and fudge] and it is a random crapshoot which I will end up with - I can be trying to make the sauce and end up with fudge, or fudge and end up with frosting. sigh mrAaru can make all 3 with a great degree of competence. So I will make the cake, he will frost it =)
Being allergic to palm/coconut/tropical crap, I can no longer risk eating commercial baked goods, or even the vast majority of box mixes and prepared frosting.If I want something, I pretty much have to make it myself. On the plus side, I can say that it really doesn’t take that much longer to make something from scratch cakewise than it does to dump a box and add a couple ingredients IF you happen to have the base ingredients around.
Granted, training helps - but some principals apply - I keep the various sized little side bowls [I have 4 oz and 8 oz, and then it jumps up to 32 oz in recyclable fibre <um, waste sugar cane pulp I think> to premeasure the dry ingredients in] and premeasure the ingredients, then it is a matter of just dumping stuff into the mixing bowl. It helps to keep things straight [oops, did I already add the baking powder, did I forget the sugar …] To get a better quality product, with ingredients you can trust, allergen free, it is worth a bit of effort. I am absolutely ashamed to admit, I can take the 3 recipes off the back of the cocoa powder can [sauce, frosting and fudge] and it is a random crapshoot which I will end up with - I can be trying to make the sauce and end up with fudge, or fudge and end up with frosting. sigh mrAaru can make all 3 with a great degree of competence. So I will make the cake, he will frost it =)
Being allergic to palm/coconut/tropical crap, I can no longer risk eating commercial baked goods, or even the vast majority of box mixes and prepared frosting.If I want something, I pretty much have to make it myself. On the plus side, I can say that it really doesn’t take that much longer to make something from scratch cakewise than it does to dump a box and add a couple ingredients IF you happen to have the base ingredients around.
Granted, training helps - but some principals apply - I keep the various sized little side bowls [I have 4 oz and 8 oz, and then it jumps up to 32 oz in recyclable fibre <um, waste sugar cane pulp I think> to premeasure the dry ingredients in] and premeasure the ingredients, then it is a matter of just dumping stuff into the mixing bowl. It helps to keep things straight [oops, did I already add the baking powder, did I forget the sugar …] To get a better quality product, with ingredients you can trust, allergen free, it is worth a bit of effort. I am absolutely ashamed to admit, I can take the 3 recipes off the back of the cocoa powder can [sauce, frosting and fudge] and it is a random crapshoot which I will end up with - I can be trying to make the sauce and end up with fudge, or fudge and end up with frosting. sigh mrAaru can make all 3 with a great degree of competence. So I will make the cake, he will frost it =)
Being allergic to palm/coconut/tropical crap, I can no longer risk eating commercial baked goods, or even the vast majority of box mixes and prepared frosting.If I want something, I pretty much have to make it myself. On the plus side, I can say that it really doesn’t take that much longer to make something from scratch cakewise than it does to dump a box and add a couple ingredients IF you happen to have the base ingredients around.
Granted, training helps - but some principals apply - I keep the various sized little side bowls [I have 4 oz and 8 oz, and then it jumps up to 32 oz in recyclable fibre <um, waste sugar cane pulp I think> to premeasure the dry ingredients in] and premeasure the ingredients, then it is a matter of just dumping stuff into the mixing bowl. It helps to keep things straight [oops, did I already add the baking powder, did I forget the sugar …] To get a better quality product, with ingredients you can trust, allergen free, it is worth a bit of effort. I am absolutely ashamed to admit, I can take the 3 recipes off the back of the cocoa powder can [sauce, frosting and fudge] and it is a random crapshoot which I will end up with - I can be trying to make the sauce and end up with fudge, or fudge and end up with frosting. sigh mrAaru can make all 3 with a great degree of competence. So I will make the cake, he will frost it =)
I dislike bakery cakes also. They seem dry and I hate, hate, hate the frosting. I also don’t like bakery brownies or cookies. Bakery donuts and breads…those I can’t pass up. But the rest is never as good as what you can make yourself. Heck, for under $2 you can make a box cake that is way better. Same with brownies. And I’d rather eat both without frosting warm from the oven. I put butter on warm brownies and chocolate cake:D
Yes! I wish I had done that.
longhair75, just double checking: that’s baking soda, not powder?
Wait, people put frosting on brownies?
To me it all depends on the frosting. If the label says buttercream frosting, then the cake is divine. If it’s whipped, then it tastes like shortening. In our area, both Meijer and Kroger make very good cakes.
Ugh, yes… For us it was clowns with balloons made of golfball-sized clots of sweetened congealed grease and enough neon colorant to paint the building.
Just another reason I’m glad to be a full-time telecommuter. I think “Chucko” and his kindred admin assistants across the country have a secret list of where to get dry cakes with nasty frosting and meeting lunches with bell peppers, mushrooms, gluten, and cilantro in everything. Equal opportunity anaphylaxis - everyone’s guaranteed to be allergic to something!
Dung Beetle Yes. It is baking soda. It will interact with the vinegar to provide the rise needed It will look real soupy when the batter is done, but trust me. This is a recipe from my Grandmother. It works every time.
One of my nieces has decided that Crisco can be used instead of a neutral vegetable oil. Her version of this cake tastes like the store frosting discussed above thread.
I once made it with a cup of melted butter instead of oil. It was delicious but way too rich
Fun fact - baking powder is a mix of baking soda and cream of tartar with the latter being the acid that activates the soda.