Desserts are among the most popular foods in the United States, making a perfect cap to all of the best yummy dinner ideas. Consider, according to the American Institute of Baking, over $356 million worth of frozen pies are sold in the United States every year. Pies, cookies, ice cream, and other postres: we absolutely love them all.
Of course, you can’t talk about the dessert landscape in the United States without talking about cake. We have cake at weddings, birthday parties, and other milestone celebrations. We turn cake into miniature cupcakes, hoping to spread our love of our favorite dessert in a more convenient form. Of course, not all of us have the know-how or the time to bake a perfect bit of cake from scratch. That’s where making cake with cake mix comes in.
Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Ghirardelli, and others all give us the option to make a standard cake at home without the fuss. The problem? Standard cakes are boring and not nearly as flavorful as the homemade variety. If you’re tired of making a bland cake with cake mix, here are four simple ways to make it a lot more exciting.
How to Make Cake Mix Much More Exciting
- Use It as a Base for Something Traditional
- Add Mayonnaise for an Extra Moist Cake
- Substitute Water for Black Soda for Flavor
- Do Everything You Can to Make It Your Own
One of the best ways to make a cake with cake mix is by using the mix as a base for something traditional and delicious. As Food Network Shows, a vanilla cake made from a mix can be combined with heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, and evaporated milk to make a simple but classic tres leches cake recipe, one of the most well known recetas de postres among Hispanic foods.
While it may sound slightly off-putting, adding a cup of mayonnaise to a standard box of cake mix, according to Hellman’s, can transform a cake made from a mix from a piece of slightly flavorful cardboard into a delicious, moist dessert that every member of your family will enjoy. You won’t even taste the mayo!
As Lady Behind the Curtain, a popular food and entertainment blog suggests, adding a black soda, whether its coke or root beer, into a chocolate cake can do wonders for an otherwise abysmal cake mix. Not only will the soda ensure your cake stays nice and moist, it will also enliven the flavors of your cake mix. Say, for example, you’re cooking a chocolate-cherry cake: with the addition of root beer, your cake will taste like a chocolate-cherry float!
The Huffington Post simply recommends that anyone baking a cake with cake mix do whatever they can to make their cake unique. Remember, mass-produced cake mix can easily lead to mass-produced, standard cakes. Whether you’re adding peanut butter cups, Swedish fish, or bits of fruit, it will go a long way in making your cake made from a mix seem like a labor of homemade love.
Cooking cake with cake mix is extremely convenient, but it can also lead to a boring, substandard cake. Keep these ideas in mind to convince your friends and family you did it all from scratch! See this link for more.