Basic Yellow Pound Cake - Anne Byrn, The Cake Doctor A cross between a Twinkie (sans cream filling) and a Sara Lee Pound Cake but better Vegetable oil spray for misting the pan Flour for dusting the pan 1 package (18.25 ozs) plain yellow cake mix 1 package (3.4 ozs) instant vanilla pudding mix 1 cup whole milk 1 cup vegetable oil, such as canola, safflower, corn, soybean or sunflower 4 large eggs 1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 325��F. Lightly mist 1 10-inch tube pan with vegetable oil spray then dust with flour. Shake out the excess flour. Set the pan aside. 2. Place the cake mix, pudding mix, milk, oil and eggs in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes more, scraping the sides down again if needed. The batter should look well blended. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing it out with the rubber spatula. Place the pan in the oven. 3. Bake the cake until it is golden brown and springs back when lightly pressed with your finger, 58 to 60 minutes for a tube pan. Remove the pan from the oven and place it on a wire rack to cool for 20 minutes. Run a long, sharp knife around the edge of the cake and invert it onto a wire rack, then invert it again onto another rack so that the cake is right side up. Allow to cool completely, 30 minutes or more. Frost. 4. Store this cake, unfrosted, covered in aluminum foil, at room temperature, for up to 4 days, or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Scratch baking isn't inconsistent when done by the same baker with the same ingredients, tools and oven. When someone who really doesn't know how to bake well has inconsistent results it's usually because the ingredients weren't handled correctly or measured properly, and the baker doesn't know the oven well enough to know the correct settings for that particular oven. I don't get the mix "doctoring" part if it's more than throw in a few raspberries or a box of pudding mix. The basics, the flour, sugar and baking powder, are the easy part! At least once you've mastered measuring. ryseryse_2004, I read once that cake mixes require the addition of milk and eggs so that the person making it will feel like it's really baking rather than magic box factory stuff. I haven't made a mix since I was old enough to measure, however, so this is just a guess: There have been a lot of changes in how fats are handled for factory made foods. It'll be the fats that create the "chemical" taste that Annie mentioned, and which are most likely to vary. They're also the first things to get rancid and therefore are what most require stabilizers and preservatives, which also have gone through changes. That may very well be your difference. They'll also have an effect on texture, and potentially even dryness. Annie and Maddielee bring up a good point. Plain old frosted cake is kind of out of style. It could be they're engineering the cake mixes to be dryer than they used to be in order to stand up to the very wet fillings, soaks, ganaches, cremes and toppings that are so in.

I grew up on box cakes and used them with my own growing family. The few times I have had "scratch" cakes I found them noticeably drier. BAck in the day my MIL made DH his FAVORITE German Chocolate cake for his birthday each year. I tried it ONCE. Never new what all the talk was about--more work--need special flour and chances of a FLOP were greater. The boxed version was MUCH MUCH moister. Now we don't eat sweets much but for Easter I always make a carrot cake. From scratch, no box but it has so much extra stuff in it, coconut, raisins, carrots it turns out moist and delish every time!! Your texture experience with a box cake may be in your technique. If you read the label they have changed DRAMATICALLY how they recommend you stir/mix them. Gone are the days when I would really beat the heck out of the batter making it thicker and lusher. Now they tell you to mix very little. The modern baker is in a hurry.

I dislike cake mixes, but my daughter loves them. I think they are too "fluffy" and they are more expensive than making my own from scratch and they all have a strange artificial flavor. My yellow cake recipe is from King Arthur flour and only has 8 ingredients, so I'll save my money, spend 30 more seconds and use 8 ingredients instead of 4, adding only flour, sugar, leavening and vanilla to the ingredients required by the cake mix directions. I do like to decorate cakes and use fondant as frosting/decoration many times. I find that cake mix cakes are not sturdy enough for my purposes unless they are "doctored" with things like sour cream and extra eggs, in which case I'm back to my 8 ingredient stand-by. I don't find that I save money or time by using mixes, so I'll stick with my "from scratch" version. In addition, if I want to make a pumpkin roll, a chiffon cake, a hot milk type, I still have to bake from scratch as cake mixes are very basic and I almost never make a "plain old" cake. Annie