Personal: Betty's Cake. Not Mine.

I knew I never liked her. Even when I was little...well except at that point I thought I could grow to like her, but the truth is, I grew up with a lot of amazing chefs in my family. No one was going to make a better cinnamon roll than my Grandma Crabbs or a better Boysenberry pie than my Grandma Krause. My mom could make the best, just best, desserts, ice-cream, and pumpkin pie, and my father was always a wiz with anything for breakfast. My problem wasn't with their home-made-totally-from-scratch-cooking. The problem was Betty. Betty Crocker. She claimed to make things all easy peasy. Still does actually and it's supposed to be getting easier and easier. There's so much crud floating around in that box that all you do is mix and bake now. Viola!!

It tastes like homemade! Blah. It does not. Last night, I started baking for our 4th of July BBQ...and after my second attempt at her Angel-Food-Cake-in-a-box (p.s. don't tell Grandma because she'd honestly disown me) I have realized that me and Betty can't be friends. I was tempted to breath into a paper bag when my cake overflowed all over my oven, but I gave up when I couldn't find one. Burning sugar and modified corn starch waifed through my house. I thought I could at least save what looked like the rest of the cake by cooling it. I huge it up-side down in true Master Chef style. Seconds later, the whole cake slid down the bottle of Riesling and out of the pan. A sticky mess of batter laid there steaming as much as I was. *scream*

As hard as cooking with scratch can be, it's been so much more reliable. And even though Betty says "Simply Add Water," written in her best cursive on the front of the box, I'm apparently the fool who will mess that up!

Sorry Betty. I really tried to like you, but you can hardly call this an Angel Food CAKE.