I made a birthday cake for my niece recently, and I wanted to do a funfetti cake - ie with sprinkles mixed in the cake batter. In the US I think they're called jimmies. However I couldn't find bake-stable sprinkles for love nor money! Can anyone recommend any particular brands that I could get in the UK?
Ahhhhh, two years ago I learned Funfetti isn’t that much fun to bake.
I learned all jimmies will melt in the oven. I should have known since they are sugar.
They will also all bleed color
some more so than others. I tried three brands.
Betty Crocker bled the worst. The Wilton and Walmart store generic brand bled the least. It may be the brands that use more corn starch bleed less. It may be the type of confectioners glaze they use. It could be the whim of the St. Honore. I’m just as bewildered by Funfetti Cake as you.
Betty Crocker ingredients: Sugar, vegetable oil (palm, palm kernel), cornstarch, confectioner's glaze, dextrin...food dyes. OMG melted and bled into the batter, made it a grey mess. Could be due to vegetable oil as the second highest ingredient.
Wilton ingredients: Sugar, cornstarch, confectioners' glaze...food dyes. Melted, bled some. Does not contain vegetable oil.
Walmart store brand ingredients: sugar, cornstarch, palm oil, palm kernel oil, cocoa, cocoa processed with alkali, soy lecithin, confectioners glaze...food dyes. Melted, bled some. Contains vegetable oil, but it has more cornstarch. It also contains cocoa, which like cornstarch is hygroscopic.
I ended up folding the jimmies into the batter just seconds before filling the tins. The less you stir when adding the jimmies the better. Rather than dumping the jimmies in, I sprinkled them over the batter for better distribution. That way I didn’t have to stir much, just two or three turns with the spatula.
After all my funfetti cake testing, my niece decided she didn’t want a funfetti cake
Edit: forgot to mention in the end I though the Walmart brand baked the best. So maybe look for jimmies with similar ingredients
