Seriously. Do y’all remember those “mix and microwave in the same box” cake, brownie, and fudge mixes? My apartment has no regular oven (apparently not a popular item for Korean kitchens); however, I shall soon have a microwave oven. I dearly like to eat cakes, brownies, and fudge and kind of like making the stuff myself. Back in the 1980s, I was making them with the microwave mixes. Now, I’m about to buy one of those kid’s easy bake ovens.
Save me from that terrible fate! Where can I get the stuff I remember from the 80s?
Actually, I thought some of them tasted pretty good. Hadn’t considered a toaster oven. Might try that tack.
Grocery stores here are quite different than anywhere else I’ve been (and I’ve traveled quite a bit). Bakeries sell all kinds of stuff but here in Korea, the bakers seem to think that it’s not a baked good unless it has coffee in it. Some of the stuff they sell, though, doesn’t have coffee, tastes pretty good, and is expensive.
They’re not gone. Hubby bought one about a week ago. I don’t eat cake, so I didn’t pay all that much attention to it, but it was a dark chocolate cake of some kind which cooked in the microwave. It came in a black platic bowl, a one-serving size. He said it was good.
OK, as it has been asked and answered, I have heard that the cake mixes that currently have you add egg and oil originally were just add water. The reason that the ingredients were changed to require additions was not because of any difference in quality, but because people didn’t feel like the just add water cakes were cooking, and it was purely a marketing decision. Is there any truth to this, or just an legend?
Yes, I remember the microwave mixes from the 80’s-early 90’s. They were convenient for single servings and were pretty good if you took them on their own terms and didn’t compare them to actual baked goods. Then they disappeared for a long time. Now, just recently, I’ve started seeing the Betty Crocker things that people are mentioning, but they look a bit expensive for what you get.
I just make regular cake mixes and cook them in the microwave in some Tupperware someone gave me. I think it’s called the Heat’n’Serve and it makes a really good full-sized, almost bundt-style cake. I usually pour hot fudge over it.
The Paris Baguette franchise (in Korea) seemed to make pretty decent baked goods from what I remember. There seemed to be a lot of similar typed bakeries around. I don’t remember buying anything with coffee in it, and I tended to choose things pretty much at random.
It’s a fairly recent trend that started perhaps two years ago. Oddly enough, it’s all about “Wel-Bing” (Koreanized English for “Well Being”), or so say the advertisements. Of course, it’s really all about conning people into buying the stuff you label, such as the triple size everything on it pizza from my neighborhood pizza joint, as being a “Wel-Bing” product.
Just got back from the commissary at Camp Walker. I was there just two weeks ago and they didn’t have those Betty Crocker microwave mixes. This time they did and I bought four of them. Looking forward to trying them out on Monday!
