Hacker News Reader

Comment by cowsandmilk | Hacker News Reader

Europe accounts for 31% of baking mix sales while North America accounts for 24.5%.

https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/bakery-p...

> seem cake mix in stores my whole life

I checked my lagest local grocery store chain and they do have one brand of cake mixes. They never really crossed my mind before.

Chocolate chip and two types of pundcake.... though that's both among the simplest baking recipies so i still don't quite see the point.

There's also pre-made pie dough, that i could see using.

Pie dough is quite simple, but I imagine they use some chemistry to improve, as per the other food chemistry posts...

Yes and no. Its usually butter based dough needing to be kneaded finely and left to rest an hour before use, prefferably pre-baked in pan before adding filling for best result.

You can get it quite quick with a food processor or a kitchenaid mixer, but kneading such a dough by hand and having the time to let rest, flatten with a rolling pin and pre-bake in pan, push pie up a bit in the effort ranking.

So i feel there is real value in quickly putting a pre-flattened doough sheet in a pan, especially if some chemistry can skip the pre-bake step.

So i see the appeal much more for this product over pound cake mix which is just four, sugar, egg and leveling agent.

That's despite Europe having 2x the population of North America.

Europe is also somewhat poorer than North America, to be fair.

Is cake mix expensive? Wouldn't powdered milk and egg be cheaper than real eggs? Is it actually more expensive to bake with cake mix than with short shelflife milk and egg?

These companies must be making bank.

It depends but cake mixes are brand products and so don't enjoy the same kind of competition that fungible raw ingredients do.

It depends on how much cake you bake though. For many ingredients you'll need less than the smallest packaging size - and much less than packaging sizes that aren't way overpriced.

The EU contains about 30% more people than the USA alone. (450MM vs 340MM)

North America overall contains many more people than the EU. (340 + 129 + 40 for just USA, Mexico, Canada, plus another ~50MM in smaller countries. 560ish total)

The EU is only around 2/3 of the population of the continent of Europe.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com