Making your own homemade cake mix

The first cake mixes were offered to housewives in the 1920s. It wasn’t until World War II that they really became popular. As more and more women began to work outside the home, there was less and less time for offering families the home baked goods that they loved. With a cake mix, much of the work was taken out of the process and all the dry ingredients were provided in the box, with only the wet ingredients needing to be added.

In order for the dry goods to stay fresh for extended periods of time, artificial ingredients were added to extend the shelf life of the products. If you read the label of a chocolate cake mix you may see some ingredients that don’t seem to belong there:

“sugar, enriched bleached wheat flour (flour, niacin, reduced Iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), vegetable oil shortening (partially hydrogenated soybean oil, propylene glycol mono- and diesters of fats, mono and diglycerides), cocoa powder processed with alkali, dextrose, leavening (sodium bicarbonate, dicalcium phosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate). Contains 2 percent or less of: Modified food starch, wheat starch, polyglycerol esters of fatty acids, salt, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, cellulose gum, xanthan gum, maltodextrin and artificial flavors.”

Chances are that when your grandma made a cake, she did not include many of these ingredients. As more people are going natural and organic and trying to cut down on additives, whose purpose and exact components we don’t understand, it is time to consider making your own homemade cake mixes.

The basic dry components of a cake are flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. This recipe uses a white or yellow cake. For a chocolate cake, cocoa is the additional ingredient. There are several things to consider when you are purchasing these ingredients. First, get unbleached flour. It will produce a coarser cake; however, unless you really want to exposure yourself and your family to the chlorine that is used to bleach most flour, this is the way to go. Next, always look for pure cane sugar. If you don’t you may end up with sugar that comes from beets not cane.

If you plan to make a large batch, decide how you are going to store each individual cake mix. If you have space, Mason jars are nice and you can then actually give them away as gifts as well as using them yourself. If space is an issue, Ziplock bags work fine.

Into each jar or bag for the white or yellow cake add:

• 2.5 cups all-purpose flour
  1.25 cup of sugar
  3 teaspoons of baking powder
  1/4 teaspoon of salt

When making the cake add:

• 3/4 cup softened butter or margarine
  3 eggs
  1 cup milk
  1 teaspoon good quality vanilla.

This can be used as 2-9” layers or one 13 by 9. The pan type will determine the amount of time needed for cooking, anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes.

For a chocolate cake mix the dry ingredients are:

• 2 cups sugar
  1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  3/4 cup cocoa
  2 teaspoons baking soda
  1 teaspoon baking powder
  1 teaspoon salt.

The wet ingredients are:

• 2 eggs
  1 cup buttermilk or sour milk
  1 cup strong black coffee or 2 teaspoons powdered instant coffee plus 1 cup boiling water
  1/2 cup vegetable oil
  1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

This recipe is called Black Magic Cake and is made in a 13″ by 9″ pan, bakes at 350 for 35-40 minutes and is a personal family favorite.

These are just two options for homemade cake mixes. With a homemade cake mix, you control what goes into your mixes and all the ingredients are fresh and easily identifiable.