Baking With Pop and Mayo

Have we lost the plot?

I have to share this because I keep seeing it, and it's driving me crazy. This is an example that shows that we're still not in a place where the quality of food matters. If the journalists are not going to write about it, who is?

There's a site called Qwoted where writers post queries looking for experts to quote in the articles they're writing for various publications.

This alone seems weird to me. In the previous century (think the 90s), writers had to reach out directly to someone with the credentials if they sought an expert. The articles written today imply this is the same scenario.

But they get many responses and pick the ones they like best without knowing the expert they're quoting or whether what they're saying is accurate. The responding expert is not required to prove they have the credentials, and it's unlikely anyone will check.

This may be a factor in why traditional media is losing public interest. It's too formalistic and shallow.

However, the questions being asked make me question what world I'm living in, although I can think of tons of other reasons to question the world in which I live.

This query asked a baking expert to answer questions about cakes and brownies:

What does mayonnaise actually do when added to a boxed cake mix? How does it change the texture and flavor?

If you're using mayo for extra moisture and richness, what's the ideal amount, and should it replace the oil or be added alongside it? (Isn’t the answer obvious? If you replace the oil with the mayo, you haven't added anything extra.)

What happens when you add soda like Dr. Pepper to brownie mix—how does it affect taste and texture?

Are there other soda flavors that work surprisingly well in brownies if you're looking for a twist?

I have a question. If a journalist (reporter, freelancer) knows nothing about the topic they write about, why are they the people writing about it?

I owned a wholesale bakery for 11 years (last century), supplying high-end gourmet and grocery stores. We primarily made cakes and squares, including brownies. I've made thousands of cakes.

Everything was made from scratch, no mixes. We used butter, pure chocolate, and whipping cream. We even used organic flour, apples, and carrots. The apples were peeled one at a time with a small contraption we screwed onto the counter. We used the apple peels, with their gut-friendly pectin, to make a jelly to use as a glaze on our Apple Bavarian cheesecakes.

There were no cake mixes or pre-made fruit fillings. No hydrogenated fat or fake whipping cream.

To say we were unique was an understatement. Our high-end competitors all cheated. They called their icing "buttercream" when it was made with shortening. They used compound chocolate, fake whipping cream, and cake mixes. Their apple products were made with a slimy goo of apples, treated with sulfites, and came from a can or a box.

One of the best-known bakeries I knew specialized in apple pies, made with apples from their own farm. Except they weren't. They may have started that way, but they quickly switched to pre-bought and treated apples. The pies were expensive and sold at high-end stores. People made a pilgrimage to the farm to tour the orchards, whose apples never made it into the pies they bought.

But that's the baking world.

You can always tell when an apple has been treated with sulfites. They're yellow instead of brown and have a weird texture. Real apples brown when baked or cooked unless you coat them with lemon juice, and even that only helps somewhat.

I never understood the need to prevent them from turning brown. But again, this is the world we live in.

There's even a genetically modified variety of apple, trademarked as the Arctic apple, that prevents it from turning brown. Why? Do you know how much money would have been spent to create this apple?

You may think I'm going down a rabbit hole and veering too far from the subject matter of this post. And I am, but let's do it.

Browning of apples happens because polyphenols are exposed to oxygen when the apple is cut. 18% of the apples’ free polyphenols (phytonutrients with many benefits, including for the gut) will be lost after 24 hours, and new proanthocyanidins (longer-chain antioxidant compounds - may also be good for the gut) are formed. I don't know anyone who leaves an apple out for 24 hours before eating it.

The key point is that browning of apples is not something to avoid. It shows we live in a wacky world when so much time and money is spent preventing this.

We started my bakery because we decided to only use real ingredients. I wanted to bring real baking to people who did not have time to bake.

From a business perspective, were we nuts? Probably. We struggled to compete because our competitors charged what we charged; their ingredient and labor costs would probably have been 50% less.

The baking industry is notoriously lacking in quality. We were once kicked out of a grocery store where we were doing a demo and accused of using real ingredients.

Since we were sampling our cakes, their customers noticed the difference between them and what was typically found in the store's pastry case. The store manager noticed the customers noticing, so we were asked to leave.

Ironically, that same store is now a huge health food store with lots of prepared real food.

Today, better-quality baked products are available, but the cake industry is still full of fake ingredients and misleading statements. Pies are even worse for this.

You would think I wouldn't be shocked if a reporter asked the questions I listed above. But since the questions referred to people baking in their homes, I am surprised.

So, here's why I will never be quoted in a publication asking these questions.

1. I don't recognize the legitimacy of the words "baker" and "cake mix" in the same sentence. If you know how to bake, why would you use a mix?

2. I didn’t know mayonnaise in cake mix was a thing. I had never heard of adding mayonnaise to a cake, so I couldn't comment on why it adds flavor and texture.

Except that mayonnaise is just fat, and any fat added to a cake can contribute to taste and texture changes. It's what fat does. Mayonnaise could work in the recipe if a cake were made from scratch. But I would want to make my own mayonnaise, at which point I've lost the story point because just adding the individual ingredients in the mayo to the cake would be the same as using the mayo.

3. But the one that got me was adding soda to a brownie mix. Why? Where did that come from?

I asked ChatGPT. According to it, using pop in a brownie can be traced to WWII, when it was used to replace eggs, milk, or butter due to food rationing. It's funny that there was plenty of soda pop.

It continued being used in the 1950s and 1960s to replace the fat or oil in recipes to lower calories and fat. Today, it's used as a vegan option and is still being used to lower fat.

Don't all bad ideas come back to lowering fat?

ChatGPT actually described it as a "fun option". Clearly, ChatGPT does not get out much.

I know the carbonation in the pop would help the ability of the cake to rise, so I can see why it might replace eggs, from a chemical perspective (not taste). But butter and milk? I can’t see pop replacing the taste and texture they offer.

My question to you is this:

Should people be paid to write about food like this? This is not the worst offender from some of the requested expert queries I've seen. But the reporters and freelance writers never write about improving the quality and value of food.

Is this where we are? Writers who do not know food, pitching articles to editors looking for "new" ideas, and counting on the "expertise" of others to make the article work. And all we're left with is fluffy information.

It is absurd to think someone will be paid to write about adding pop and mayonnaise to a cake or a brownie mix.

Some of these requests are so detailed that the expert, who is not being paid, practically writes the article so someone else can be paid.

This is very true for those writing about health issues. Again, the decision about what to write is not necessarily based on what would be helpful for us to know.

I don't think that I'm alone in this. I want depth and quality. I want interesting information that appeals to my senses, especially regarding food. It's why I look elsewhere to find new ideas for my life. What about you?