Crummy products that totally fool you

[ray goud]

OK, time for me to make MY confession:

At a dinner about 35 years ago made by my then landlord's mother, I was asked how I liked dessert (everything else was superb, venison, taters, etc). I stated that the shortcake with whipped cream was great, only later to learn that it was CoolWhip instead of cream. Boy, was I embarassed!

Ray

[Kouign Aman]

Fat Guy, if you liked em enough to eat 5 and ask for the recipe, what makes them a "crummy product"?

Very good question!

The (assumed) lack of quality ingredients, for one, that results in a machine-made chemical foodstuff that is bread in name only?

I again note the profound evil that is the Chorleywood Bread Process.

And then there are all the fans of the high yeast, high salt "5-minute" bread - a dozen or more pages of them chiming in here.

[choux]

I don't understand at all how you equate these 2 things together. Could you explain please?

[Kouign Aman]

Choux,

this from the wiki article linked re the CBP:

In the book Not on the Label: What Really Goes Into the Food on Your Plate, Felicity Lawrence observes that the industrial scale of the Chorleywood Bread Process comes at a nutritional cost, requiring larger amounts of salt and yeast than traditional bread recipes

However, I fail to understand how yeast is less nutritious than flour. Differently nutritious yes, but less?

I have no problem w tartaric acid in making my souffles, why would I mind it in bread?

And soforth w many of the listed 'evil' additives.

[paulraphael]

However, experience teaches that something on the order of 99% of commercial, industrial food products contain preservatives, additives and such that in my book make them "inferior." I don't mean to insult the other 1%, though.

Not exactly to the point, but I think we're mistaken in blaming things like preservatives and additives ... whatever an additve may be ... for making crappy commercial products crappy. Usually they're crappy because they're cheap, or because so many recipe compromises have to be made to give them long shelf lives. Sometimes they're crappy because it's hard to make great things in factory-sized batches, but I think this is only occasionally the case.

You mentione ice cream earlier. It's an interesting case. The better industrial ice creams, like Haagen Dazs and Ben and Jerrys, achieve textures that most pastry chef's would be happy with. And they manage this with frighteningly long shelf lives and durability in the face of temperature swings and other kinds of abuse. But the flavors are typically only so so.

They manage the great textures because the technology is available to stabilize ice cream just so. But they struggle with flavor because great, intense flavor is expensive. To make a pint of commercial ice cream with a deep, three-dimensional vanilla flavor (or fruit flavor, or chocolate flavor ...) requires expensive ingredients, and in many cases careful handling. I suspect it would just put the price out of reach of their market.

Homemade ice cream typically flips the equation: great flavor, challenges with texture.

Edited October 6, 2009 by paulraphael (log)

[Emily_R]

I've got to say, along the lines of fooey's comments, that I find that the Ghiradelli box mix brownies taste better than pretty much every from-scratch brownie I've ever had. In this case, its not a matter of being fooled, but actually preferring the box version. I don't see the shame in it... To the extent that I really think it tastes better, its de-facto therefore not an inferior product to me.

[Lilija]

I've got to say, along the lines of fooey's comments, that I find that the Ghiradelli box mix brownies taste better than pretty much every from-scratch brownie I've ever had. In this case, its not a matter of being fooled, but actually preferring the box version. I don't see the shame in it... To the extent that I really think it tastes better, its de-facto therefore not an inferior product to me.

Agreed. I'm sort of sad to admit that no "from scratch" brownie I've ever put out has tasted better than these badboys. Try subbing in Kahlua or dark rum for the water, and see where that takes you.

[Kouign Aman]

I've got to say, along the lines of fooey's comments, that I find that the Ghiradelli box mix brownies taste better than pretty much every from-scratch brownie I've ever had. In this case, its not a matter of being fooled, but actually preferring the box version. I don't see the shame in it... To the extent that I really think it tastes better, its de-facto therefore not an inferior product to me.

Agreed. I'm sort of sad to admit that no "from scratch" brownie I've ever put out has tasted better than these badboys. Try subbing in Kahlua or dark rum for the water, and see where that takes you.

Oh sugar, I realllllllllllly wish you hadnt said that.

Oh dearie me. Its a long time til I get off work today.

[Lisa Shock]

I do think that there's a difference between the products that are crummy because the good stuff cannot be mass produced and the products where every penny is pinched so hard that the ingredients are barely recognizable.

On the one hand, you have chocolate sauce for ice cream. Periodically someone asks us how they can commercially seal and sell their delicious chocolate, sugar, cream, and butter sauce so that it has an indefinite shelf life. The short answer is that without a bunch of chemicals and an adjustment to the water content, it's simply not possible. The dairy spoils within a few days and most home recipes contain enough water to support bacterial growth. So, you either make it at home and eat it fairly soon, or, you buy a chemical laden jar which doesn't taste as good.

Then, there are things like frozen lasagna, where 3 ounces of broccoli is shredded into tiny bits to make 12 servings and the cheese flavored filling is extended by the use of cheap starches and binders that when whipped hold lots of tiny air bubbles. In this sort of category, we do have different companies producing varying levels of quality, a few of which may actually resemble some people's home cooking. Here, it's often the merchants at the low end of the spectrum who are reprehensible in using a red-colored sauce that contains just a little tomato, or using starch and water to make an artificially cream flavored sauce. -None of which has the nutrition, or flavor, of the item they imitate.

[CaliPoutine]

I've got to say, along the lines of fooey's comments, that I find that the Ghiradelli box mix brownies taste better than pretty much every from-scratch brownie I've ever had. In this case, its not a matter of being fooled, but actually preferring the box version. I don't see the shame in it... To the extent that I really think it tastes better, its de-facto therefore not an inferior product to me.

Ghiradelli is the only boxed mix I'll use when I make Symphony Brownies( sandwich a symphony toffee almond bar between the batter, use coffee in place of the water) and no one around these parts knows that their not a from scratch product. If you look at the ingredient list, its pretty short, not a lot of chemicals, etc.

I bought some Rhodes warm and serve rolls today. I admit I only bought them because I had a coupon and they were almost free. I was pretty impressed with the ingredient list. Whole wheat flour, salt, water, butter and yeast. I hope they taste good because I'll buy them again. I dont remember ever seeing such a short ingredient list on a frozen convience food.

[abooja]

Thanks to this discussion, I bought and then baked a box of Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Brownies yesterday. I've got to agree: I still prefer them to any one of numerous versions of my homemade brownies. Burns me up.

[llc45]

I've got to say, along the lines of fooey's comments, that I find that the Ghiradelli box mix brownies taste better than pretty much every from-scratch brownie I've ever had. In this case, its not a matter of being fooled, but actually preferring the box version. I don't see the shame in it... To the extent that I really think it tastes better, its de-facto therefore not an inferior product to me.

Agreed. I'm sort of sad to admit that no "from scratch" brownie I've ever put out has tasted better than these badboys. Try subbing in Kahlua or dark rum for the water, and see where that takes you.

Oh sugar, I realllllllllllly wish you hadnt said that.

Oh dearie me. It s a long time til I get off work today.

[/quote)

Uh Oh - It turns out i just bought a box of 6 Ghiradelli brownie mixes from Costco last weekend to tryout and my Dad just bought me two bottles of Kahlua!

[Lilija]

I've got to say, along the lines of fooey's comments, that I find that the Ghiradelli box mix brownies taste better than pretty much every from-scratch brownie I've ever had. In this case, its not a matter of being fooled, but actually preferring the box version. I don't see the shame in it... To the extent that I really think it tastes better, its de-facto therefore not an inferior product to me.

Agreed. I'm sort of sad to admit that no "from scratch" brownie I've ever put out has tasted better than these badboys. Try subbing in Kahlua or dark rum for the water, and see where that takes you.

Oh sugar, I realllllllllllly wish you hadnt said that.

Oh dearie me. It s a long time til I get off work today.

[/quote)

Uh Oh - It turns out i just bought a box of 6 Ghiradelli brownie mixes from Costco last weekend to tryout and my Dad just bought me two bottles of Kahlua!

If you're seriously into the whole mocha flavor, dissolve a spoonful of instant coffee in the Kahlua, or rum. If you sprinkle the top with white chocolate chips, before baking, or drizzle it with condensed milk after baking, then you've recreated my very own Midnight Special brownies, inspired by a mixed drink of the same name. (The drink contains equal parts of dark rum, Kahlua, and Coke, with a spoonful of condensed milk stirred in. Sounds gross, but it tastes like a coffee-ice cream float.)

[Fat Guy]

I would not characterize Ghirardelli brownie mix as a crummy product. It doesn't contain a lot of garbage:

Ingredients: sugar, enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folate), chocolate chips (sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla), partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oils, natural cocoa, wheat starch, cocoa (processed with alkali), salt, artificial flavor, sodium bicarbonate, natural butter flavor.

That being said, I wouldn't go nearly as far as saying that Ghirardelli brownie mix is better than any from-scratch recipe. If you make them with better chocolate and real butter (as opposed to the combination of soybean and cottonseed oils and "natural butter flavor") and you're reasonably competent at following directions, they come out better.

(Edited to add: I recently had one of Jenn Giblin's brownies. She's the pastry chef at Blue Smoke, a restaurant here in New York. There's certainly no comparison between her brownies and Ghirardelli brownies from a mix.)

This is true of baking mixes in general. A lot of them are fine. Bisquick is fine too. I use it if I'm feeling lazy, just as I might use a brownie or cake mix for a low-priority batch. But, if you do this stuff from scratch, once you traverse the learning curve it does come out better.

Edited October 8, 2009 by Fat Guy (log)

[abooja]

This is true of baking mixes in general. A lot of them are fine. Bisquick is fine too. I use it if I'm feeling lazy, just as I might use a brownie or cake mix for a low-priority batch. But, if you do this stuff from scratch, once you traverse the learning curve it does come out better.

I'd like to think that I traversed that curve a long time ago, but I still often prefer brownies from a mix. Bad breeding or bad recipes? Brownies are one of the few items that I bake that flummox me so. I use very good ingredients in everything I bake. Makes not a damn bit of difference.

I used to have a favorite chunky brownie recipe from Chocolatier that wowed them every time, but I stopped making them when I met my husband, since he was convinced he was allergic to all nuts. They just weren't the same without walnuts. Now that he can eat nuts, he decided that he doesn't like them all that much. My trusted recipe has been rendered useless. The Ghirardelli box calls my name.

[Lisa Shock]

I'd like to point out that using a mix doesn't save much time. On average, for a cake, a user saves about 13 minutes -most of which would have been spent scaling ingredients. And, brownies take less time to assemble.

That 13 minute savings is a direct trade for ingredient quality & freshness.

I'd also like to point out that many people here appear to be using recipes that call for ingredients to be measured by volume rather than more accurate weight-based scaling. This inaccuracy may account for some disappointing results.

[paulraphael]

I know a few people who prefer cakes from mixes to cakes they've made from scratch. I think it's because the mixes use food science that makes it easy to get good results without good technique.

A cake made from scratch with better ingredients and good technique would be better than the mix ... but this isn't the point of reference for these people.

Edited October 8, 2009 by paulraphael (log)

[abooja]

I should add that the Ghirardelli mix brownies was the first mix I have used in many years. I've long since shunned mixes, and volume measurement, for every conceivable thing made from scratch (including Fluff) and weighed on my gram scale. People seem to enjoy my baking, brownies included. I can bake cakes far more worthy than what comes out of a Dunkin Hines box, some (7-layer) detailed on eG. I just decided that, after 20 years of from-scratch brownies, I get just as much, if not more, enjoyment out of eating mix brownies. I still prefer baking from scratch. It kills me to admit any of this, but there you go.

[Aloha Steve]

I'd like to point out that using a mix doesn't save much time. On average, for a cake, a user saves about 13 minutes -most of which would have been spent scaling ingredients. And, brownies take less time to assemble.

That 13 minute savings is a direct trade for ingredient quality & freshness.

I'd like to echo Lisa's first comment from her post.

This recipe "Barb Schaller's Famous Orgasmic Chocolate Brownies" takes me about 12 minutes from start to oven. Try it and see if it is not only better than the box mix but maybe the best plain brownie you've ever had ! Barb tweaked the recipe and came up with "Chocolate Cherry Amaretto Brownies" She says and I quote "They won first place at the Minnesota State Fair a couple times and a variation (Chocolate Cherry Amaretto Brownies) also won first place"

The original is here in the Brownie Cook-Off discussion posted with Barb's permission.

Edited October 11, 2009 by Aloha Steve (log)

[dividend]

One of my coworker's brought in some sugar cookies. They were in one of those quaint white wax cardboard boxes lined with tissue paper like you'd expect from a cute little bakeries, and they were delicious - so soft and buttery. I was fooled. He got them, not from one of the bakeries scattered around town, but from Walmart.

[Dana]

ouch, that one really hurts.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I got a free bag of King Arthur brownie mix with my last order. It was pretty good.

[baroness]

There are mixes - and then there are mixes.

The various King Arthur Flour mixes I've tried have had results equal to very good (though not stupendous) from scratch recipes. And their ingredient lists do not resemble a chemical warehouse.