Funfetti Bake Off!

There is something to be said about practicing a baked good before show time. 

Lucky for me, I have fantastically wonderful, hungry co-workers that like to eat cake. 

So, here’s the backstory- I’m making a tiered funfetti wedding cake this weekend (what could possibly be better than a lifetime of love and sprinkles?!). Anywho, as a fellow lover of all things funfetti, this job lead me into some deep thought. If you want funfetti cake, you want it the way you have always had it, right, with the assumption that we are talking box mix. But now that this whole baking thing has spiraled my life out of control, I realize there are substitutes to box cake mixes. I thought that perhaps a white cake recipe with sprinkles thrown in might be a refreshing change to the funfetti box, and taste a little yummier, due to the homemadeness (I just made that word up, right?) of it all. So, I had to do it. Funfetti Bake Off 2012. Box versus scratch. 

This activity wasn’t merely to see which cake would taste better. I wanted to see if you could taste a difference, if people could determine which was the box mix and which was the scratch recipe, and why they preferred their respective favorite cake.

White cake + sprinkles

Funfetti box cake

 

Before I go any further, I will admit that I incorrectly guessed which cake was mine (ha!). Feeding cake to a bunch of scientists brought up flaws in my research design (I did not randomize which cake would be feed first to each person- eek!) but we muddled through in the name of sweets!

Drum roll!!!!

Along with a few outside sources, the funfetti box cake mix was overwhelmingly chosen, 5-3! While both cakes were good (at least this is what my sources claimed….), the box mix was favored for its lighter and fluffier texture. The white cake mix I was using was from one of my baking classes, a recipe typically used in a professional setting, which was a little denser and richer (which was favored by a couple for that reason), and since people more often are eating box mix than professional cakes of this manner, I think that is ultimately why it was picked over the scratch recipe- people are just used to eating those box mixes. My mother had a few choice words to say about people growing up on box cake mixes, but I will omit her comments. = )  

I would be interested to try this again, with a different, lighter white cake mix. That would be truer to the box mix and possibly taste a little fresher. In the meantime, I adamantly support giving people exactly what they want, so I’ll be going with the box mix for the bride this weekend! I can’t handle the thought of choosing the tub frosting over homemade buttercream though, so that’ll be the choice of frosting. I can’t wait to place the cute cake topper on the top tier, that the bride made! A full report will be up this weekend! 

Today’s events made me anxious to collect more recipes and learn more about different cakes and their textures. I’ve been meaning to collect all of my recipes and organize them into an app on my phone, so I’m making that my new priority, and then collecting more recipes from there. 

In the meantime, let me know if you have any other baking experiments for me! My co-workers would love you for it! ;-)

Now go throw some sprinkles around your kitchen!

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