"D" as in DISAPPOINTED in the DOWNSIZE

It's that time again!  It's time for Alphabe-Thursday sponsored by Ms. Jenny at Jenny Matlock..."off on my tangent."

This week we are studying the letter "D" as in DISAPPOINTED in the DOWNSIZE.

I sometimes bake special cakes or cupcakes following recipes from the Cake Doctor.  Have you see her cookbooks?  She has a bunch of them, but these are the two I have on my bookshelf.

One of my favorite recipes is for cupcakes using Oreo Cookies.  I hadn't made them in a while so I sent my son to the grocery store with a list of ingredients.  He called from the store and said he couldn't find the white cake mix I needed in either the Betty Crocker, Pillsbury or Duncan Hines brands.  What?  I've always been able to find it.  I thought that was kind of strange.  Then he said, "I'm looking for the 18.25 oz. box, but they all say either 15.2 oz. or 16.5 oz."  I ran to the computer and googled cake mixes.  Sure enough they have all reduced the size of their mixes over the past year.

I guess they all got together and decided to do it.  There's not a word on the boxes about the change.  Online I found people posting on message boards about how their favorite recipes using cake mixes no longer worked.  So, if you have a favorite recipe...BEWARE!

I went to the Cake Doctor's website and she had a few suggestions for dealing with the changes.  One was to add 6 T of flour to the cake mix.  That's what I did, but I thought my favorite cupcakes were a little dry.  You can read all her suggestions here.  Just scroll down on the page.

However, on my last trip to HEB (a Texas grocery chain) they had their own brand of cake mix still available in the 18.25 oz. size.  I quickly grabbed two boxes because I would imagine at some point they'll be downsized too.  The Cake Doctor now has her own cake mix and they are still the 18.25 size, but only available at Central Market in Texas and I don't have one nearby.  They're sold on her website too, but right now they're only available in yellow cake or chocolate cake.

I know downsizing products isn't unusual nowadays, but usually it doesn't impact a favorite recipe this way.  Cake recipes are different.  Then they don't even make a notation on the box, so unless you look carefully you'd never know until your recipe failed.

They claim it was so they wouldn't have to raise the price.  Most people aren't buying cake mix weekly and probably wouldn't even notice a slight increase in price.

I'm DISAPPOINTED in the DOWNSIZE.  How about you?  Did you even realize?

Now head over to Ms. Jenny's blog for a list of this week's participants.