Betty.

Dear readers, I have committed the most shameful act a baker can do. I used a boxed cake mix. But I had to, both for my own intrigue and to save you the pain of ever having to do so.

I chose of course Betty Crocker's infamous range of cake mixes for which you need only add 1 egg!

I felt ashamed as I peeled open the box and took out the mixture of god knows what accompanied by the squashed cupcake cases. If ever you needed a reason to bake from scratch, Betty Crocker has put it in a box.

Here's all you'll need...

Who needs to cream butter and sugar when you can add water to some brown powder?

The Egg.

Egg, mix, and water.

Having mixed my 3 'ingredients', there is no sense of achievement in mixing together an egg, water and some powder. None of the sense of time, effort and love that goes into making a cake from scratch. There's no weighing of ingredients, sifting, beating or creaming. It's a completely souless experience.

I'm all for saving time, but really once you have your flour, sugar, eggs and butter, baking at its most basic is mixing them all in one bowl. In fact in the time it took me to get Betty's Box open, cut open the plastic bag and tip it in to a bowl, I could have me a delicious home made cake mix...

The mix at this stage is quite grainy and bland, with, and I stress, a hint of chocolatey taste. So no fear of eating all your mix before it hits the oven...

And of course Betty was kind enough to squash some cupcake cases into the bottom of her box...

To be fair to Mrs. Crocker...it does make 6...

Ahem...Tudaah...

So texture wise, not too shabby. Moist...muffiny...tasteless. They really were like chewing on a muffin with literally no taste. Again, there was a whiff of chocolate in the air, but it really was just largely chewing on something that really wanted to be a muffin, but grew up to be a sad little chewy thing.

If you want to bake some muffins, or a cake, because you want to show people what they look like, or you want to poison your worst enemy, I'm Betty all the way.

But if you want to really bake a muffin, or a cupcake, or a cake, then I urge you to bake from scratch! The pennies you'll save buying Crocker's Box of Wannabe-Cake really isn't enough to justify not spending a few more pennies and another 10 minutes baking real cakeage the real way.

Down with Betty's Boxes!