Oh boy are we talking about exciting stuff today. Flour, and more specifically, cake flour. Do you know how expensive cake flour is? It's about $4.50 per box. Yikes! And the annoying thing is that you need it. If a recipe calls for cake flour, it's pretty important that you use it instead of a different kind of flour. The thing about flour is that each type (all purpose, bread, cake, etc.) has a different percentage of gluten. That gluten affects the elasticity and texture of your dough. If you used bread flour in cupcakes, you'd have some pretty tough cupcakes. Likewise, using all purpose flour instead of bread flour isn't going to give you the same chew. So, don't be stingy and use all purpose flour instead of cake flour because you won't get the same results. Especially since now you can make your own, and you don't have to spend the exorbitant amount of money on it.

To make cake flour, you combine two simple and cheap ingredients in a sifter and sift away.

The only "bad" thing about this recipe is that you have to sift it about four times.

But taking the ten minutes to sift and sift and sift is worth the money saved in my opinion. Especially since I buy a 25-pound bag of all purpose flour at Sam's Club for about $10. I go through a lot of flour; therefore, paying a lot of money for any type really isn't an option for me. So take the time to sift two ingredients together and make yourself some cheap cake flour!

Make Your Own Cake Flour Recipe
Makes 4 cups
Print this recipe

Note: If you want a small batch of this, for every cup of all purpose flour, remove two tablespoons of the flour and add in two tablespoons of corn starch.

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup corn starch

Combine the ingredients in a sifter. Sift together four times. (I like to sift it into one bowl, scoop it out, and sift it back into the same bowl.) Store in a 1970s Tupperware container if you're cool like me. Ha!