I didn't know that boxed cake mixes got smaller. Did you?

I don't remember the original size, but my 9 x 13 pan used to be filled with baked cake up to the top in years past. Now I always think the frosting is so low. Would probably bake better in a 9 x 9 pan.

I've heard that. What a crock. I also heard the ingredients to make the cakes weren't adjusted, so how will they even turn out?? I hate that so many companies are sneaky about changing the sizes of things, and STILL raising the prices. It can really mess with all kinds of recipes.

What size pants do they tell you to use now they must have adjusted the cooking time if not the pan size correct?

I don't make cakes often enough to have noticed, but I am annoyed/disappointed nonetheless.

I also just saw a TikTok on this, apparently, a cupcake baker said her cupcakes weren't coming out the same, or not making as many, and she realized they changed the amount of mix in the box. She said they (I think it was Better Crocker) must have figured out how much mix they could get away with without changing the amount of eggs or oil or whatever, which I think would have tipped more people off. So now she buys a box and adds a couple of oz to another box to get it back up to what it was before. 

Such bullshit.

That's what my DH says. I tell him that the companies do market research, which tells them (although they may be asking the wrong question or asking it the wrong way) that people "Will not pay more than [blank] for {item}."

If they phrased it differently, i.e., "We all see that prices have gone up for everything. Would you be willing to pay a little more to keep the {product} the same size and quality?" they might be surprised. This technique of shrinking just ticks people off, especially with food (How do you plan/budget/shop for meals? And if one cake mix box makes a cake only 2 inches tall, people should know that!).

I didn't realize this, but I'm not a baker, so its not something that would have jumpbed out at me. I ddin't notice the front of a strawberry cake mix and it was showing one layer cake and I thought that was odd, but now I know why! And now it dawned on me about a peach cobbler my mom makes with a cake mix. About 6 months ago, she had made one and it was sitting on her kitchen counter and I asked her what happened to it as it was about half the height in a 9x13 baking dish. She said nothing and I'm like, didn't it use to come all the way to the top? Probably so, but not now with so much less cake. Awful!

Another reason to bake/cook from scratch. Takes only a little longer and gives consistent size/results.

As long as people keep buying processed products with less value than before, companies will keep making them that way. And given what we’ve learned recently about price-fixing from various suppliers, I don’t think for a moment that they need to do that to make a reasonable profit. Corporate profits have skyrocketed.

A five pound bag of flour still weighs five pounds. So does a four pound bag of sugar. And I don’t notice that the prices of those have increased much.

I made brownies for Thanksgiving and I used 2 boxes of Ghirardelli mix. Usually those two boxes would give me 12 brownies (I have a pan with deep individual wells for brownies). This year I got 10 full size, could have done 11 if I'd made them all a little smaller. I was so disappointed. Cakes and frosting I'll generally make from scratch since they aren't hard but I have yet to meet a brownie recipe that comes out as nice as a box mix.

The shrinkage of products has messed with some of my old tried and true recipes. I have learned to really check the weight or volume of a product to make sure it is what I need for the recipe.

This. They shrunk to 15.25 oz a number of years ago, way before Covid. Just recently I noticed they are even smaller now, some are as much as two additional ounces less! It really is annoying.

I bake a lot and I’ll say that for whatever reason, vanilla cake is so hard to get right from scratch. Mine almost always end up too dense. Chocolate cake from scratch I can do but I haven’t yet found a vanilla cake recipe that comes out as light and fluffy as a box mix cake.

Now having said all that, I tried yet again to make a vanilla layer cake for a work project. The recipe I used said it would yield a three layer, 8” cake so I did that vs. buying two mixes. Yeah, NO. I had the pans all greased and lined with parchment, measured out the batter and there was no way I was getting three 8” layers out of that recipe! I quickly greased up and lined three 6” pans, scooped the batter into them and had to bake the hell out of it for it to be done in the middle (in hindsight, I should have used a heating rod in the center of each layer) but in the end it was a pretty height and looked good which was the main goal for what I needed to do. It tasted okay but wasn’t amazing. Next time I’ll just use two boxes of mix.

I’ll second (or third?) the Ghirardelli brownie mix. Costco sells it in a 6 pack and they’re literally the best brownies ever, so why hassle with scratch? I think they work out best in a 7”x11” pan but that’s an odd size that not many people have.

I hear what you’re saying on the butter, but I use Costco butter all the time and haven’t had any issues with it at all, so maybe that’s regional? If you look on the inside wrapper it shows the plant number where it was manufactured down on one corner and people in some of my other baking groups noticed that a lot of different brands of butter all come from the same plant.

I also just watched a girl on tiktok go thru this butter problem bc the Costco butter would NOT whip into buttercream! ive never seen such wild comments over BUTTER lol

Maybe this explains why all my crusts are oily. How do you compensate for it?