Baking secret

Y'all know I don't like to bake, (that's not the secret) so when it comes to making a cake or cupcakes, you better believe I'm gonna turn to Betty Crocker or Pillsbury.  Today I was making cupcakes for Kaitlyn's party this weekend.  Do you ever notice that a box of cake mix doesn't seem to make enough batter for 24 cupcakes unless you want a few of them to be puny?  Or what if you want more than 24, like 25 or 26? I figured there had to be a way to add to a cake mix to make a little more batter.  I did a search and found this. This comes from a blog called Nellie Cakes. 

The Sunday Secret this week is how to stretch one box of cake mix to create almost double the cupcakes or another layer for the cake you’re making.

This can come in pretty handy when you don’t feel like baking from scratch or just don’t have the time. I usually have one box of cake mix in the house for baking emergencies, but if I had to bring more than 24 cupcakes somewhere on the fly, or I want to be sure my cake layers aren’t going to be too skinny, I used to be screwed before I came across this little tid bit. Sometimes I even implement this tip into my ‘from scratch’ baking just to make sure I have enough batter and it works out wonderfully.

When you want to make a bunch of cupcakes, but you only have one box of cake mix and you can’t (or don’t feel like, which is usually the case with me) go to the store, here’s what you do:

Open the cake mix and do whatever the back of the box says.

After everything is blended together, (and this is the important part) measure out two teaspoons of baking powder and mix it in well. That little bit of baking powder will cause the cake batter to rise much more substantially that it would have without it, so when you fill the cake pan or cupcake tray, pour a little less that the recipe calls for into the pan. If the recipe calls for the cupcakes to be 2/3 filled, only pour in enough to fill it half way (maybe even a little less).

Bake as usual, checking with a toothpick when it comes close to being done.

If you want to stretch the mix even farther and give your cake more fluffiness, you can whip the egg whites that the recipe calls for until stiff but not dry peaks form. Slowly fold that into the batter after the rest of the wet ingredients have been added (including the egg yolks, if the recipe calls for whole eggs), just until it’s incorporated.

There you have it! A Sunday Secret that’s on time and super useful. Enjoy!

EDIT: If you just want to stretch the cake mix (to save money perhaps) but you don’t want that many cupcakes, just measure out half of the mix and add half the ingredients on the back. If it calls for an odd number of eggs, half the amount of eggs and add one half. (3 eggs divided by 2 = 1.5 eggs plus 1/2 = 2 eggs) Take the egg white from the extra egg and whip it until you get stiff but not dry peaks .

For example, if the recipe calls for 3 eggs total, use 2 eggs when you half the recipe and then whip the egg white from one of those eggs.

I really don’t know how clear any of that was… math is kind of hard to explain, even when it’s simple math. Maybe I’m just a moron. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Of course I found this after I had already filled my cupcake pans and put it in the oven. I ended up with only a couple puny ones.  They are the ones with extra icing. Speaking of icing....I always thought red and blue make purple.  Apparently when your talking about food color and icing, they make a lovely shade of taupe.  Luckily I had a tube of purple icing for writing with and I squeezed it into the taupe icing and it made it a bit more purple-ish.....just a bit.So what do you think....remember the icing is supposed to be purple, and I decorated them with paw prints for Kaitlyn's dog party.

You can tell they are paw prints, right?....looking at them now, I think the toes are too far away.  Oh, well!