My husband always wants applesauce cake for his birthday, and I always make it from scratch. It’s his grandmother’s recipe.
When I have a cake jones, I will sometimes buy a teeny little white cake with buttercream icing from the bakery in our local grocery store. It is very yummy.
For special occasions, I often buy truly awesome and delicious cupcakes from our local cupcake bakery.
However, because I must live on the same planet as MsRobyn, I don’t have cake very often. This is also why I don’t bake it very often, from either scratch or mix. Three people + a full-sized cake = me eating WAY too much cake.
I should say that I grew up with cakes from box mixes. Before ready-to-spread icing in the plastic tubs came out, my mom always used frosting mixes. (Do they still make those?) Then I moved to Troll Country, and at that time - 1990 - the cake mixes here were a) expensive and b) not very good. So I had to start baking from scratch if I wanted decent cake, and I quickly discovered I like doing it.
Downstairs in my building there is a truly excellent bakery (or rather, the retail outlet of such a bakery that’s located in some other borough). If I have an irresistable urge for cake, I go down there–they make small cakes, perhaps three or four inches in diameter, that are perfect for a single serving.
I say to my awesome girlfriend “Awesome Girlfriend, I’d love some cake tonight!”, to which she she responds by making a cake from scratch. She’s awesome.
No, the time-consuming part is in the planning, and making sure you have the ingredients, and going to the store, and keeping track of stuff while you’re making it. And usually a good bit more cleanup, because you can’t use just one bowl to mix the ingredients.
Let’s say it’s your turn to bake for someone’s birthday at the office. Here’s how it works with a box mix:
Stop at grocery on the way home. Grab box, grab can of icing. (Planning done, ingredients bought.)
After dinner, preheat oven, pull out cake pan, pull out big mixing bowl, measuring cup, mix, eggs, milk, oil. Look on box to see how much of what. Break eggs into bowl, dump mix in, measure milk and oil in. Mix. Grease cake pan, dump mix in, put cake pan in oven. Set timer. Lick bowl. Relax.
See, there’s no thinking. Maybe if you bake cakes from scratch with some regularity, then you know whether you have the ingredients on hand for spice cake, or what to get, without having to dig out the recipe, scrounge through your pantry and spice rack, and so forth. And even deciding what cake to bake means flipping back and forth between different recipes, rather than spending 5-10 seconds deciding which box to grab off the shelf. Right there,* that’s more time than I spend on the entire process when I bake a cake from a box mix*.
Maybe you don’t spend that time because you bake from scratch with some regularity. But if you don’t, then you do have to spend that time, so it is a lot longer to bake from scratch.
IMHO, your friends are right. Don’t bother with the scratch biz. Add in stuff if you want a different experience.
I got one recipe from, can’t remember, Bon Appetit? something like that. Followed it faithfully. Took about an hour to conjure up, then cooking time. A lot of cleaning, a lot of trouble. Tasted just like mix cake.
In addition to RTFirefly’s great explanation: for people who don’t bake regularly, even basic things like measuring the flour take a lot longer than for those who are comfortable in the kitchen. With any recipe I make regularly, I just zip through it. Things I don’t make as often, I’m spending extra time re-checking the recipe, making sure I didn’t miss a step, figuring out if something is cooked properly.
Baking (or cooking) is also more complicated when you have two little kids who want to help but are actually making the process longer. There are times when I want to spend the whole afternoon baking with my kids, helping them measure and pour and stir. Other times, I just want to get the process over with as quickly as possible.
I make a lot of birthday cakes, which are mostly chocolate or white. I use mixes for them, because they’re cheap and easy. All my effort for those goes into the icing and the decorating. The icing I do make from scratch, and with butter, for the love of God. Buttercream is made with butter.
However, the day I make a red velvet cake from a box mix instead of the real thing with buttermilk and vinegar and cocoa and cooked flour icing, you should take me to see the neurologist, because I’ve obviously sustained a serious head injury.
I also don’t use box mixes. I have flour, sugar, milk, eggs, baking powder, butter, and (various interchangeable) flavouring agents in my house at all times. Baking with these also means I’m not subject to the whims of the mix makers who might put needless, yucky or artificial ingredients in.
Also, storebought frosting is disgusting. Regular icing has two ingredients, one of which comes out of your kitchen faucet.
I buy them when I want cake. The sad fact is that I’ve never had a cake anyone has baked at home that I prefer to one made at a grocery store or bakery. It’s the frosting that does in mine and everyone else’s home-baked.