Homemade cake batter.....

so most everyone has made a boxed cake before...... and i am sure are familiar with the consistency of the batter..... kind of thin, definitely pourable.

well.... whenever i try making a scratch cake, the batter is completely different. am i doing something wrong, i always feel as if i have messed it up somehow. my scratch cake batter comes out thick, if i am making cupcakes i can use a ice cream scoop pretty well with it. if i am pouring it into a cake pan, it doesnt just pour out freely from the mixing bowl. more like plops out, and i have to scoop it out with a spatula.

normal? is this "real" cake batter? please excuse my ignorance!

I didn't want your post to go unanswered, Becky, so I'll try. I used to bake allll the time. Almost always from scratch, but I occasionally took the box mix short cut if time was an issue. I don't ever recall an issue with batter thickness. Sounds like your working with a recipe that gives you more of a brownie? How many times have you worked without a mix? I have a great dessert cookbook - Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts. My momma gave it me. But I've also got a soft copy of Betty Crocker's cookbook that's probably 35 years old, missing a hundred pages, stuffed with hand written notes, and covered in cake batter. My bottom line is that if you're trying to make a normal cake, your batter should definitely pour as described, but I have seen plenty of recipes that produce more density. Let me know if want me to recommend something. Haven't been in the baking business for a long time, but I did fill my car trunk with goods for a "help me" bake sale when I broke my ankle several yrs ago. That's where I developed a HUGE disdain for the Joy of Cooking. I call it "The Book of Lies!".

As with many recipes, it just depends on the recipe what the batters looks like. My chocolate cake batter is quite thin and easily pours. The white cake batter is much thicker and not pourable, but more scoopable. Different recipes yield different batters. No problems.

I only bake from scratch, so can't compare to boxed mix batters.