Recipe or Packet

We live in a very rushed society, where there is never enough hours in the day.
It's quicker to buy a packet of biscuits than make them fresh.
Its more convenient to have a cake mix in the pantry than to put in the time to make a cake from scratch.
This may be true, to a point, but nothing is nicer than freshly baked cakes or biscuits.

Packet cake mixes just need you to add the eggs, soft butter and liquid, pop it in the oven and 40-45 mins later presto, cake, add the prepared supplied frosting and in just over an hour you have a cake ready to eat.

How much easier than creaming the butter and sugar, adding the eggs, then flour, milk and everything else that is required. Not to mention the mess.

Yesterday I set myself a challenge, to see if I could bake a chocolate cake, with chocolate frosting in
around the same time as making a packet mix.

The first thing I did was set about finding a quick mix recipe. I found one in the trusty old PWMU cookbook:

180grams of butter softened
2 cups of self raising flour
4 tablespoons of cocoa
1 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs
1 cup of milk

Sift the dry ingredients together, add all the other ingredients into a mixing bowl and beat for 3 mins.
Pour into a greased, lined tin and bake for 40-45 mins.

While the mixture was beating, I prepared my cake tin.
While the cake was cooking, I cleaned up then made the frosting:

50 grams butter, softened
1 1/2 cups of icing sugar
2 tablespoons of cocoa
Beat all together adding a small amount of milk until desired consitency is met

When the cake come out of the oven, I turned it onto a cake cooler and iced while still warm.

Presto, in just over an hour, the cake was cool enough to eat.

Quick Mix Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Frosting 

It doesn't cost a lot of money to stock your pantry and fridge with the basics, flour, sugar, eggs, butter, milk.

With these 5 items, you can make an array of easy baked goods, and by also having handy things like cocoa, vanilla, 100s & 1000s,  choc chips, golden syrup, food colouring and spices, you can make just about anything, in no time.

After I baked the cake, I cleaned up and made a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  Again in less than an hour.

Cheaper, easier and fresher than anything you can buy.


BB