"betty crocker" news and stories

As you may have noticed, I have something of a weakness for vintage cookbooks. I like seeing how women were cooking (and it was almost always women doing the home cooking back in those days) in the few generations before I was born. I like the pictures, which typically range from quirky and appealing to downright stomach-turning (that cherry pie doesn't look particularly appetizing).

This Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book, which is the second edition and was published in 1956 (to see covers of all editions of this book, click here), satisfies my vintage cookbook needs on a lot of levels. It starts you out with a photographic tour of the modernly decorated offices and workspaces of the Betty Crocker kitchens (complete with faux living room) and then moves you into the basic recipes and meal plans. There are pictures throughout the text, but more often you come across helpful diagrams and line drawings, some very reminiscent of the illustrations found in my preferred edition of the Joy of Cooking (late sixties/early seventies, with the white dust jacket and turquoise fabric underneath).

Beyond all that though, it is a useful and still-applicable cookbook. It has pie crust recipes which aren't particularly different from many of those available today. It has temperature guides for roasting meats and offers an assortment of menus that help you get dinner on the table fast (whether you're doing your cooking in 1956 or 2008).

Source

Before I even went to this list of American food icons that never really existed, the first name that immediately popped into my head was Betty Crocker. And yup, she's on the list. Along with Ronald McDonald, Uncle Ben, and Aunt Jemima.

I can understand why the clown is on there, though he doesn't really seem to fit in with the other three. Betty Crocker, Uncle Ben, and Aunt Jemima aren't just icons like Ronald McDonald, they also have seemed like people who actually do the cooking and not just represent a company. In fact, Uncle Ben was recently promoted to be Chairman of the Board of his company, and Betty Crocker has become sexier over the years.

But what fake icons are missing from this short list?

[via Jade]

A quality homemade cake is going to trump a cake mix cake every time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that cake mixes are never worth using. After all, they are quick, easy and inexpensive -- a tough combination to beat. In a recent issue, Cook's Country collected eight different brands of cake mix to see if any could come close to homemade.

They were quick to point out that none of their testers were fooled by the store-mix cakes, easily identifying the unusually uniform crumb and the ultra-fluffy texture that is created by the emulsifiers and other additives in the ingredients. Even so, five out of the eight mixes were still recommended: Betty Crocker Super Moist Butter Recipe Yellow Cake, Betty Crocker Super Moist Golden Vanilla Cake, Pillsbury Moist Supreme Classic Yellow Cake, Betty Crocker Super Moist Yellow Cake and Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Butter Recipe Golden Cake. While the textures and colors of the winning cakes varied slightly from mix to mix, all had nice butter and vanilla flavors that make them worth eating, and only a very minimal (if any) artificial-ness to their flavor.

The cake mixes that didn't make the cut were panned by tasters for both poor texture and "insipid, stale" flavors. If you're going to buy a cake mix, stick with one of the brands above and avoid Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Classic Yellow Cake ("a 'spongy Twinkie' "), Jiffy Golden Yellow Cake Mix ("dry and terrible") and King Arthur Flour Vanilla-Butter Cake Mix ("grainy, crumbly ... strong almond extract aftertaste").

The most popular cornbread mix on the market is Jiffy, and even though homemade is still the top choice of cornbread loves, it is a close second. It isn't the only cornbread mix on the market and in the last year, after very stagnant sales of muffin mixes - including cornbread - Betty Crocker decided that it was time to try and revamp their product to compete with Jiffy. The problem for them was that, even though they had a good product and Jiffy only advertised through word of mouth, they had a hard time driving up sales.

A General Mills executive decided to do a little in-house research with the help of some of the company's African American employees, based on the fact that African Americans account for more than one third of all cornbread sales in the US. What he found was that they didn't buy Betty Crocker either. One employee even said "I'd never eat Betty Crocker cornbread because it's not for black people."

With the feedback from the employees and not much else, the company tweaked the packaging to feature skillet cornbread, rather than corn muffins, and approached B. Smith for endorsement and to be a spokesperson for their healthy-eating "Serving Up Soul" campaign. The endorsement of a respected, award-winning chef and restaurateur gave the rebranded cornbread a little more credibility, and sales got a boost - rising almost 25% in the last year.

Source

When Alanna sent me a note to let me know about a Lifehacker post on making low-fat cupcakes, I knew I would have to give it a try out of sheer curiosity. After all, Lifehacker is not exactly a food oriented site and to take a break from their regularly scheduled content to mention cooking seemed to be a sign that their technique was worth trying. Notice that I said technique and not recipe.

These light cupcakes are sort of a food hack (or a diet hack) using two ingredients: cake mix and diet soda. If you're not curious, or are so put off by the ingredients that you don't want to hear how the cupcakes turned out, you may as well stop now. Otherwise, read on...