Wellness

[pigletsmom]

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@gardenman wrote:

Bear in mind most cake mixes use eggs also, so the contamination could be from the eggs and not the cake mix. Only 75% of the cases are traceable to cake mixes so it could be the eggs. Most people don't eat raw eggs other than in raw cookie dough or cake batter and eggs are a common source of e coli infections. They may be pinning this on the wrong ingredient. 

Oh, and I'm a raw cake batter, raw cookie dough, and raw bread dough taster. I know the risks and I accept them. By tasting the raw product I can often determine if i've left something out. Oddly enough, I haven't died yet after 62+ years of eating the raw stuff. If you know how raw dough should taste and you taste a fresh batch and it doesn't taste "right" you know you left something out and can figure out what. Nearly every professional chef/baker I've ever seen does the same thing. If you wait until after something's baked, it's too late to fix it.

I'm scrupulous about washing my hands after handling a raw egg. Contamination is most likely on the outer shell rather than on the interior of the egg, and I've never had an issue. I have saved myself from multiple baking disasters though when I've realized after tasting the raw dough that something's off. Could it kill me at some point? Sure. But so can a gazillion other things. I just made a cake on Saturday and tasted the raw batter and I'm still alive today.

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Same. And I've also been known to eat raw hamburger meat. 

[gardenman]

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@pigletsmom wrote:

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@gardenman wrote:

Bear in mind most cake mixes use eggs also, so the contamination could be from the eggs and not the cake mix. Only 75% of the cases are traceable to cake mixes so it could be the eggs. Most people don't eat raw eggs other than in raw cookie dough or cake batter and eggs are a common source of e coli infections. They may be pinning this on the wrong ingredient. 

Oh, and I'm a raw cake batter, raw cookie dough, and raw bread dough taster. I know the risks and I accept them. By tasting the raw product I can often determine if i've left something out. Oddly enough, I haven't died yet after 62+ years of eating the raw stuff. If you know how raw dough should taste and you taste a fresh batch and it doesn't taste "right" you know you left something out and can figure out what. Nearly every professional chef/baker I've ever seen does the same thing. If you wait until after something's baked, it's too late to fix it.

I'm scrupulous about washing my hands after handling a raw egg. Contamination is most likely on the outer shell rather than on the interior of the egg, and I've never had an issue. I have saved myself from multiple baking disasters though when I've realized after tasting the raw dough that something's off. Could it kill me at some point? Sure. But so can a gazillion other things. I just made a cake on Saturday and tasted the raw batter and I'm still alive today.

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Same. And I've also been known to eat raw hamburger meat. 

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Or as the fancy folks say, "Beef tartare." It sounds much better than raw hamburger.

[ALRATIBA]

It would never occur to me to taste/eat raw dough.

[gardenman]

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@ALRATIBA wrote:
It would never occur to me to taste/eat raw dough.

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When you cook/bake you try to use every sense to make the food the best. You can add salt, pepper, other seasonings as, or even after you cook food, but when you're baking you can't fix mistakes later. You have to fix the mistakes before the item hits the oven. Some things like bread dough you can feel the texture as you're needing it and see how the dough rises which helps you know if everything's right, but with cakes, cookies, pies, the only way to know if you forgot something is by either tasting the raw dough, or waiting until after it's baked and then throw it away if it's bad. By tasting raw dough and knowing what "good" raw dough tastes like you can save yourself from wasting stuff. You would be hard-pressed to find a pro baker who doesn't taste raw dough on a regular basis. And there's a good reason they put cookie dough in some ice cream. It tastes very good.