"mix" news and stories

Alright, full disclosure time: I made this rockin' buckwheat waffle from *cough* a mix *cough*. But the cinnamon-sugar apples? Totally my own.

I wanted to supplement the waffle with something from the fruit and veggie group, hence the apple addition. I rough-chopped and simmered the apple (an organic Gala) in a 1/4 cup of water until the pieces were soft, and then sprinkled it with a pinch each of nutmeg, cinnamon, granulated sugar and cloves, and them simmered for another minute or two. I drained the apples on a paper towel, lest the waffle get soggy.

Obviously, dear readers, I am in desperate need of a mix-less recipe for whole wheat or buckwheat waffles. Any suggestions?

There are a lot of people who, as a general rule, eschew baking mixes. After all, why use a boxed mix when you can do it yourself and produce a better result? This standard may hold true when it comes to the average inexpensive store-bought cake mix, but there is a wide range of high quality, gourmet mixes available now that produced baked goods that will rival not only homemade things, but those from pro bakeries, as well. In fact, many of the mixes are coming from these pros to begin with. Jacques Torres has recently launched a line of baking mixes for several of his most popular chocolate treats: Pure Bliss Brownies, French Kiss Cookies, and Mudslide Cookies. The mixes are made in conjunction with King Arthur Flour and contain all the necessary basics for replicating the chocolatier's favorite treats at home, including a lot of chocolate. They retail for $12.95 each.

I sampled the end results all of the mixes at the SF Fancy Foods Show a few weeks ago, and while all three were excellent, the chocolate-filled chocolate chip French Kiss Cookies were probably my favorite. If you want to give one of them a try from scratch as a comparison, you can find the recipe for Jacques Torres's Mudslides here.

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If you have ever visited Hungry Girl's website, you know that she is a huge fan of Vitalicious products, but even though she talks them up a lot, she's certainly not the only one who enjoys them. The company is growing by the day because, since we all watch what we eat from time to time, their healthy and very tasty snacks are a natural option for anyone looking for a quick bite to eat. And what could be better than a low calorie/low fat, high fiber, vitamin and nutrient fortified snack that also tastes good?

How about one such snack fresh from the oven?

Vitalicious has just introduced a line of baking mixes that will allow you to bake up your favorite flavor - Deep Chocolate, BlueBran, Sugar-Free Banana Nut, and Deep & Velvety Chocolate VitaBrownie - at home. All of them can be made in regular muffin pans to turn out 2 or 4 ounce snack cakes, but you can also order some silicone VitaTop pans if you prefer to stick with the company's signature snack shape.

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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.

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