Yesterday I made a pumpkin bundt cake from scratch. I discovered the recipe on the blog In Diane’s Kitchen. I’m proving a point to Betty Crocker.

On Tuesday I called Betty Crocker. Well, not a real Betty Crocker because she doesn’t exist. Instead, I talked to a representative in the General Mills customer care department. I lodged a complaint because Betty Crocker cake mixes have shrunk — again.

For most of my life, cake mixes were 18.25 ounces. I have some great cake recipes that call for an 18.25-ounce cake mix and build from there, like a decadent chocolate rum cake and a tasty pistachio cake. So about ten years ago when the cake companies dropped the mixes to 15.25 ounces, I wasn’t happy. At the time, I called Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines to complain. (Unlike Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines was a real person, but he died in 1959.) Neither company cared that I was concerned my cake recipes could become obsolete — 15.25 was their new standard. They weren’t rude, not at all. They were apologetic and sympathetic, but I could read between the lines — I could like it or lump it. (The phrase customer care is an oxymoron.) Fortunately, my cake recipes still worked with the 15.25-ounce size.

But last week I discovered there has been another shrinkage. Betty’s cake mixes are now 13.25 ounces. So far Duncan Hines is still weighing in at 15.25 ounces, as is Pillsbury. When I called Betty Crocker’s consumer care department on Tuesday, I told them I would no longer buy their cake mixes. I explained that I wasn’t about to experiment by using a cake mix that is 5 ounces less than the amount called for in the recipe. I further explained that if other companies followed suit, I would make all my cakes from scratch because I have some good recipes. The customer care representative was sympathetic and kept saying, “I’m sorry about that.” She said she would pass my concerns along. But I know nothing will change, except in the future when the cake mix loses more weight.

You can google to find out how much extra flour and other ingredients, like baking soda, to add to the prepared mix. But go ahead and call me “my father’s daughter” on this one: I’m not buying a product then adding what the company should have added in order to make up the difference. One website suggested buying two boxes of cake mix, and adding six tablespoons from the second box to the first box. Then I was to seal up the leftover cake mix and save it to use for other cakes. AS IF!

So yesterday to prove my point to Betty Crocker, I made a pumpkin bundt cake — from scratch. Because I follow the blog In Diane’s Kitchen, the recipe landed in my email a couple of weeks ago. Pumpkin mixed with a dash of cinnamon, ground cloves, and ground ginger makes this cake taste like a slice of autumn. It has the consistency of a pound cake, which pairs well with coffee. And, in my experience, baking a pound cake is more forgiving than baking a regular cake.

Some thoughts to keep in mind if you make this cake:

1. Diane recommends eating the cake with vanilla ice cream. I’d go with a creamy vanilla custard. However, this recipe calls for three sticks of butter and six eggs, so I skipped the ice cream. I’ve never baked a cake recipe that called for six eggs. This reminded me of one of my all-time favorite novels City of Thieves by David Benioff. Set in Russia in WWII, the two main characters in the novel have been arrested and are to be executed. However, a powerful Soviet colonel promises to pardon them if they can find a dozen eggs for his daughter’s wedding cake. There is war and famine, but the colonel wants his daughter to have an elegant wedding and a big cake, and so an epic quest for a dozen eggs begins. And this bundt cake? That might serve twelve people at the most? It gets six eggs!
2. The recipe Diane shared says to spray the bundt pan with cooking oil. I used Baker’s Joy. When it was time to remove the cake from the pan, it came out like a dream.
3. Diane noted that while the recipe said to bake for 60 minutes, she needed to bake the cake for 64 minutes. So did I, but I started with 60 minutes.

I will make this cake again. It was worth the extra time and effort. Besides while I made the cake, I listened to A Lady’s Guide to Gossip and Murder, the second book in Dianne Freeman’s Countess of Harleigh Mystery series.

[To read my review of Freeman’s first book in the series, click here.]