This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live.
A few years ago, when my daughter was 5 or 6, we spent an afternoon baking a cake from scratch. This was inspired by binge-watching The Great British Bake Off and becoming obsessed with Mary Berry’s Victoria Sponge. The cake came out fine! But as I was putting all the ingredients together, I wondered: Why am I doing this from scratch?
I am just not the kind of person who feels virtuous for assembling each and every step of a recipe myself. I embrace kitchen shortcuts. Bisquick pancakes are great; beans from a can are fine. But cake mix is the most excellent. And beyond being easy to use and ultimately creating delicious, tasty cakes or cupcakes, it’s a terrific way to teach your kids basic kitchen responsibility and cooking measurements, and kill a rainy-day afternoon, to boot.
Cake mixes are low-stakes. They are cheap (we like Duncan Hines’ white cake mix and Trader Joe’s yellow cake the best) and hard to really screw up. Your kids can practice cracking the eggs into them, and even separating eggs for white cake; it’s easy to fish out any shell pieces, and a little yolk won’t kill anyone. Stirring can happen by hand or with a mixer (we’ve done both, even when the mix calls for a mixer—doesn’t matter!). And you can also add food coloring for a little adventure.
There are instructions, but not too many, and they’re clear and easy to follow. So easy that, earlier this year, when my now-11-year-old asked: “Can I bake a cake by myself?” I said, “Of course!” Because who really cares how it comes out? She asked for help with the oven, but otherwise pulled off a slightly ugly (too many colors added to the batter) but delicious cake, all on her own. We like to do them in the Bundt pan the most, but a basic 9-by-13-inch pan is easy and great, too.
I always have a cake mix in my pantry. If my kid has a friend over, they can bake together. If she is grumpy or bored, it’s a suggestion she never says no to. And the best part is? I get to eat it too.
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