Good morning, it’s Thursday and a brand-new month is upon us. Rabbit, rabbit!
I mentioned the other day that I’m trying to do more cooking at home. Sometimes, when I’m feeling especially ambitious, I will try my hand at baking. But with the exception of truly foolproof recipes like quick breads and cookies, I’m usually disappointed in the results.
Let’s not even talk about my pie crust. Absolute disaster.
Part of the problem is that baking is a precise science, relying on specific chemical reactions between ingredients combined with heat. Unlike cooking, which encourages experimentation and is somewhat forgiving, offering a wide array of “fixes” if you over-salt or end up with lump gravy, cooking is very exact. Screw up the ratios and the final product won’t rise or is more brick than cake.
I don’t have the patience for precision. I do not own a stand mixer or a kitchen scale, nor do I have the time or inclination to sift my flour or carefully level off my cups of sugar. I like substitutions and tend to balk at the amount of butter it takes to make a baked good truly flaky or tender. You CAN sub applesauce or yogurt in some cases, but not in others. (See: piecrust, failure).
The trouble is that I liked homemade baked goods. They are vastly preferable – and generally healthier – to mass-produced treats (caveat: there are a lot of local bakeries that use whole ingredients and produce incredible pastries, breads, rolls, croissants, pies, and cakes; I patronize these places regularly).
I could default to a mix, which has all the ingredients pre-combined in a handy box or bag, requiring me to just add a few things – usually the wet items like eggs, oil, milk, and/or butter (or, in my case, applesauce). And while I do keep a few of these on hand in the cupboards for when the baking bug bites and I am too lazy to measure everything out, I don’t make a habit of it.
It turns out that I am in the minority, as the ready-made baking mixes market is growing steadily as consumers become increasingly interested in baking, but also are pressed for time and more conscious of both food costs and their health. The global cake mix market alone is expected to grow to $2.25 billion (yes, with a “b”) by 2031.
The first prepared retail baking mix was introduced in April 1930 by a company that is still around today: JIFFY Mix. Not only is JIFFY (it goes by one name these days) still going strong, but it continues to be a family-run business. The brand, Chelsea Milling Company, is located in Chelsea, MI, and managed by CEO Howdy Holmes, the grandson of the founder, Mabel White Holmes.
Chelsea Milling Company started as a flour mill. According to the company’s origin story, during the Great Depression, Mabel set out to develop a product that would help single fathers in the kitchen, inspired by the flat biscuits she spotted in the lunch of a friend of who twin sons who didn’t have a mother at home.
With the mantra that the product needed to be “so easy, even a man could do it,” Mabel came up with a mix priced at just 10 cents a box that only required the addition of milk and would turn out “perfect biscuits every time.”
Mabel felt strongly about keeping JIFFY mixes affordable for struggling families during the Depression era. More than $75 years later, the iconic blue-and-white box of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix, a staple around the Thanksgiving holiday season, still sells for less than $1 a box. The company is fiercely independent, generally shies away from splashy advertising campaigns, and has rejected private equity buyouts and acquisition offers.
Today is National JIFFY Mix Day, which apparently was chosen for no reason in particular, other than Oct. 1 seemed to be as good a time as any to kick off the so-called “fall baking season.”
More clouds are in the forecast today, though it will likely stay dry for the time being. Temperatures will again top out in the low 70s.
In the headlines…
The Trump administration on Wednesday started sending $500 refunds to Obamacare enrollees the White House said were overcharged for healthcare by the Biden administration.
The Treasury Department is releasing checks to more than 950,000 Americans in 30 states, according to an administration official. Some families with more than one “affected person” will receive multiple $500 checks or direct deposits, the official said.
Recipients will also receive a letter dated Sept. 30 from President Donald Trump, which is being mailed starting today. “For years, the Biden Administration overcharged you to fund the operation of HealthCare.gov,” Trump writes in the letter.
The Senate confirmed President Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Labor, Keith Sonderling, just before heading home to campaign for the midterm elections.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gathered hundreds of junior officers and enlisted troops at a base in Virginia on Wednesday to extol the virtues of basing Pentagon policy on culture-war issues and to complain about the news media.
In the “State of the Force” address, Hegseth doubled down on his decisions to fire dozens of admirals and generals, bar transgender people from serving and eliminate diversity programs. And again, he used vulgarities to describe certain groups of Americans.
A Tennessee woman convicted of murder survived two doses of lethal injection before state officials suspended the execution and had her taken to a hospital for medical care, her lawyers said. It was the second botched execution in the state this year.
Cornell University agreed Wednesday to initiate an independent investigation into how the Ivy League school handled what a former student now alleges was fraternity house gang rape, according to Gov. Kathy Hochul, who sits on the university’s board.
In a social media post, Hochul said she called for the investigation, and the university’s president agreed. Hochul said she expected the university to make the announcement soon.
An antiquated New York law that shields rapists who target intoxicated victims is under renewed scrutiny, but Assembly Democrats have long opposed a proposal to close the legal loophole, with one even referring to it as the “ruining drunk sex bill.”
The vast majority of Cornell University’s sexual misconduct claims don’t wind up getting investigated, while even fewer — a mere 13% — result in an accused student or staffer getting expelled or dismissed, according to a new report.
The Cornell University student who accused seven fraternity brothers of sexually assaulting her told police: “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” according to a newly revealed transcript.
When told Jane Doe had said she was confident she was raped, Tomkins County DA Matthew Van Houten said, “That wasn’t information that I had, first of all. Second of all, that is a legal conclusion.”
The woman known as “Jane Doe” was initially embarrassed about what happened at a fraternity party in 2024, but soon concluded: “I was assaulted.”
Hochul is calling for exemptions from federal tariffs on transit rolling stock after a new report estimated the tariffs could add $1 billion to the MTA’s plans to purchase new subway cars, commuter rail cars and buses — and deliver a blow to the agency’s budget.
New York’s minimum wage will not increase in January for the first time since 2024, when the state began tying it to the rate of inflation. But Hochul intends to pitch a proposal that would raise it anyway.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman opposes the Hochul-backed New York City takeover of Brooklyn’s financially ailing Maimonides hospital.
Blakeman taunted Hochul over her administration’s fight to cancel the Massapequa Chiefs team name – as high school seniors trolled the Empire State’s ban on Native American imagery.
A super PAC boosting Hochul’s reelection bid has launched its air campaign — essential cover for a Democrat who four years ago was swamped by GOP spending in the final stages of the race.
Three southern states filed lawsuits Wednesday to dismantle New York’s legal protections for doctors who mail abortion pills to patients out-of-state, including to states with restrictions on reproductive choice.
The son of late Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel endorsed Republican Saritha Komatireddy for state attorney general in a blow against incumbent Democrat Letitia James.
More than 21,000 New York households applied for utility bill relief in just two weeks after the state launched an enrollment push for the Energy Affordability Program, Hochul announced.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo over the summer purchased a nearly $10 million home in Remsenburg, an enclave in the Town of Southampton.
More New York children are completing their routine childhood vaccinations than a decade ago, but a growing share are falling behind the recommended vaccination schedule, according to a new study by the New York Health Foundation.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has received his federal security clearance nine months after taking office, enabling him to receive classified briefings on terrorism and other threats to the city.
Sam Raskin, a spokesperson for Mamdani, would not clarify when exactly President Trump’s administration provided the mayor with the clearance, only saying it happened at some point this week.
The Mamdani administration plans to take legal action if Columbia University declines to reopen a campus walkway to the general public, according to a new court filing this week.
Mamdani will forge ahead with his controversial pied-a-terre tax rollout – despite a judge ordering the city to go back to the drawing board and essentially start from scratch.
A historic rent freeze for the city’s roughly 1 million stabilized apartments officially takes effect today, fulfilling one of Mamdani’s key campaign promises even as ongoing litigation threatens to undo it.
Mamdani received a mixed reception in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, as the city’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community celebrated Sukkot, with some residents welcoming his participation and others criticizing his appearance at holiday events.
New York City lawmakers, officials and street-safety advocates argued for hours on Wednesday at a packed hearing to regulate electric bikes and scooters, after a series of fatal crashes.
More than 75 delivery workers flooded City Hall to push back on a package of e-bike bills they feared would lead to an aggressive police crackdown and cost them the bikes they rely on to make a living.
Dozens of e-bike survivors living with life-changing injuries from the dangerous vehicles — and the loved ones of those who were killed in the wrecks — rallied on the steps of City Hall to demand tighter enforcement on the deadly, unregulated scooters.
New York City is gearing up for a major overhaul of its e-bike rules, with the Council weighing proposals that could phase out the fastest class of legal e-bikes, put delivery companies under tighter city oversight and give police new tools to identify illegal devices.
The Department of City Planning released a list of 12 community districts subject to a new “fast-track” review process for all rezoning applications meant to spur additional housing construction, which is already garnering backlash from some local leaders.
The MTA on Wednesday said Trump’s tariffs on foreign imports are on track to add $1 billion to the price of New York’s new train cars and buses.
A former NYPD sergeant admitted that he posed as an ICE agent and demanded a Queens woman report with her family to an immigration facility to settle what prosecutors called a “personal vendetta.”
The man who was dragged to death by a rush-hour subway train in Brooklyn on Monday was “unsteady” and using a cane as he exited the car onto the platform, NYC Transit President Demetrius Crichlow said during a news conference.
Long Island’s famed Oheka Castle will sell to the highest bidder next month — finishing its transition from grand Gilded Age manor to a gavel-ending auction.
The moose that many local residents saw roaming around Rensselaer County over the weekend was euthanized on Wednesday, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) says.
In the wake of the murders of four Mechanicville children, the state Office of Children and Family Services confirmed that it is investigating Saratoga County Child Protective Services.
Body camera footage from a police shooting in Wappingers Falls in June that left a 17-year-old dead shows several officers firing a volley of shots as the teenager moves toward them in a seemingly non-aggressive manner.
The private Whitney Park wilderness and its Adirondack Great Camp structures have been marked down to stimulate a sale. The trust that is selling the 36,000-plus acres recently dropped the asking price by almost 15% to $106.5 million.
A former girlfriend of Albany Med Health System President and CEO Daniel T. Pickett III has accused him of sexual assault as part of a lawsuit that Pickett’s attorneys have characterized as an attempt to smear him. Pickett denies the allegations.
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office says the city will face a $26 million budget deficit by the end of the year and that Albany’s approach to its finances has not been rooted in reality for years.
Albany Mayor Dorcey Applyrs’ pick to serve as the city’s top lawyer, who led her administration’s effort to hire a lobbying firm this year, told the Common Council the process of selecting a firm fell short of the city’s best practices for choosing outside contractors.
This November, Mechanicville voters will choose whether to preserve their commission form of government, in which city council members serve as administrators and legislators, or replace it with a government whose daily operations are run by a city manager.
The exits on Interstate 88 will soon be mile-based rather than the traditional sequential numbering used for decades along a highway that stretches from Binghamton to Rotterdam.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
