Substitute scratch for mix.

May 25, 2014 5:12 PM

I'd like to make a cake (mandarin orange cake) but all the recipes I have found from Google use cake mix. I am not anti-cakefromabox, especially when doctoring it, but I don't have time to go out and buy a box of cake mix. I do, however, have a well stocked kitchen. How I can substitute ingredients from scratch for a vanilla cake mix?
posted by maryr to Food & Drink (5 answers total)

Doing a search for "mandarin orange cake scratch" turns up several recipes that do not use cake mix, this one, for example.
posted by needled at 5:16 PM on May 25, 2014

I'd use the dry ingredients from the from the classic Betty Crocker Cookbook starlight yellow cake recipe, which is a very simple, standard butter cake recipe. The recipe you linked to will up the eggs from 3 to 4, replace the butter with oil, and replace the milk with mandarin oranges and their juice.
posted by drlith at 5:24 PM on May 25, 2014

I often wonder about this too sometimes, since I bake a lot and several of my favorite recipes started as doctored box mixes. I bake mostly from scratch these days, but I'd like to hang on to my old recipes!

Cake box mixes are basically just the dry ingredients all mixed together. Here's a recipe I found in my most recent attempts to find a "from scratch box mix". I haven't tried it yet, but the ratios look promising.

homemade yellow cake mix

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Measure flour into quart size mason jar. Add sugar on top, then baking powder, then salt. Place lid on jar.
posted by PearlRose at 6:43 PM on May 25, 2014

I've got a couple of orange sponge cake recipes, if you'd like: not mandarin oranges, though.
posted by easily confused at 4:04 AM on May 26, 2014

Made cake as directed in drlith's link, substituting only the mandarin oranges for the milk and upping the eggs from 3 to 4. Result was very sweet, almost as if I had used a box mix! (Kind of glad I ran out of time to make frosting.) The batter was very runny but everything baked up to the right consistency. Thank you for the help!
posted by maryr at 5:56 PM on May 26, 2014