So for a long time I was very ashamed that I used box cake mix in my business orders. Yes. This. Is. A. Confession. In the beginning of my baking career I would only use box cake mix. I would scurry into HEB and pray that none of my clients saw me. Anyway, now that I’ve spilled the tea on myself I want to tell you about how I now embrace box cake mix (I also bake from scratch ok!) and what I do to make it taste a little bit more homemade.

A basic box cake mix will usually call for oil, eggs, and water. Usually box cake mixes are foolproof due to the amount of rising agents that the mix contains like baking powder and baking soda. So this makes it really easy to add and take out ingredients you don’t want.

First let’s talk eggs. I like to add one extra egg for a total of 4 large eggs at room temperature to my box cake mix. Eggs help to create the fluffy-ness of a cake. So since we are going to add more ingredients we are going to need the help of this fourth egg to make sure our cake is fluffy and our other ingredients are able to incorporate a lot better.

Flour. It seems like you already have enough dry mixture but the reality is that when you bake a box cake mix you will usually notice that the cake is somewhat hollow. So this is where the flour comes in. I usually add 1 Cup of all purpose flour to any box cake mix to help my batter grow a bit in size and to also give it a homemade, not hollow texture.

The third thing I like to add is instant pudding mix. This will help our cake to be moist. Besides adding moisture to our cake, instant pudding mix will also add flavor. I usually pick an instant pudding mix similar or the same as the flavor of box cake mix im using. In case you don’t want to use instant pudding mix, you can also add sour cream and this will have the same effect on your cake.

And finally. I like to substitute the water in the box cake mix recipe for milk. This will make our cake taste better and the fats in the whole milk will help to melt our ingredients really well. I also add 1/2 C of vegetable oil. And a teaspoon of vanilla.

Make sure to test out what works best for you and let me know if you try this out. You can also see these steps on my YouTube channel.

NOTES:

In general you can add these things to any cake mix to make it better

• 1 cup all purpose flour + 1 cup sour-cream + 4 eggs
• 1 cup all purpose flour + 1 instant pudding mix + 4 eggs
• one of the above methods + extra 1 tsp flavoring of your choice
• for chocolate replace the water for milk coffee (prepare using 1 cup of warm milk with 2 tsp instant coffee)
• replace the oil for butter (but personally the oil makes it a lot more moist so I rarely replace it)