My friends hated my baking! Where did I go wrong??

The general rule is if you sample something, and it taste bad you don’t serve it.

Knowing what brownie recipe you used, and the actual brands of ingredients you used, it’s difficult to say what caused the bitterness. Traditional brownie is made with unsweetened chocolate. Over the years bakers have revised brownie recipes to use bittersweet chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate added chocolate chips, etc.

Insofar as red velvet cake, there’s no such flavor as red velvet. If you look at the recipe you’ll see it’s nothing more than a butter cake with an astronomical amount of red food dye. There’s an insignificant amount of cocoa powder, but that 2 Tbsp of cocoa powder is not for flavor. It’s just there to enhance the color of the dye. Flour to cocoa powder ratio is so small it’s not enough to create flavor.

Red food dye is made from a scale bug called a cochineal. A lot of people do not like the taste of red food dye. Since it is a bug, you cannot use red food dye and vegan or vegetarian products.

In baking for others, you cannot bake to fads or your personal preferences. It’s like gift giving, you don’t by a gift for yourself, then give it to somebody else.

My sister does this and it drives me crazy. I have beautiful expensive linens all in my sister’s taste. They would match her dinnerware perfectly. I can’t use them at all. When you bake for others you have to take the time to find out what they love.

My sister absolutely loves this cake from Whole Foods. She buys it so much that when she brings it home her husband just rolls his eyes.

So I thought I could do better than Whole Foods. I created a Cara Cara chiffon layer cake. I made passion fruit cream filling. Then I made a mascarpone Chantilly icings. And I bought the array of fresh berries. And I re-created this cake for an event. I didn’t tell anyone it was a dupe of the Whole Foods cake. Before I finished serving everyone a slice guests were lining up for seconds. Everyone was commenting that it was like the Whole Foods cake only better.

Find out what people like, and concentrate your efforts on creating something special for them.

This is what red food dye is made of. Some people are very sensitive to the taste. Some people claim it’s delicious. I personally will not use it.

https://www.wired.com/2015/09/cochineal-bug-feature/

/r/AskBaking Thread