I write to you this morning as we await the second ice storm in less than a week in Kentucky. I’m starting to think 2020 was just prepping us for 2021! Ice storms always strike fear in my heart because in 2009, an ice storm shut down much of central Kentucky and left us without electricity for 4 days. And we were some of the lucky ones. So when the weather predictors seemed certain that a storm was heading our way last week, we went into preparedness mode. One of my contributions was baking a cake.
No, you don’t need a cake to survive an ice storm. But some comfort never hurts and cake IS comforting. My husband loves him some cake so it was also a Valentine gift of sorts that I figured perhaps I should make early in case we did lose power.
For years, I’ve seen the cake mix “hack” on Pinterest and other social media platforms. It goes something like this…..”Turn a cake mix into a bakery cake in minutes!” The instructions are:
Replace the required water with milk.
Add an extra egg or two.
Replace the oil with butter and double the amounts.
I’m always very cautious about baking. Baking requires chemistry. With cooking, you can truly make it up as you go. If the soup is too salty, add more water. There’s generally a way to salvage your dish. With baking, one false move and your cake can flop. So I did some research.
I posed the question to a cooking group that I’m in. Feedback included “Life changing!”, recommendations to NOT double the butter, recommendations to definitely double the butter, and several questions from a woman who asked why I didn’t just make a decent scratch cake instead of trying to “McGyver” a cake mix. She also asked WHY my husband likes cake mix cake though she assured me she wasn’t being judgemental.
I also consulted my friend Betina whose daughter Lily is quite a teenage baker. I was assured that Lily ONLY makes her box cakes this way now and she follows all the steps. Since I trust Lily more than random internet strangers, I decided to go for it.
I had a white cake mix and a strawberry cake mix. I was a bit haunted by a commenter in the cooking group who said when she tried this method on a strawberry mix, it “smelled like a barnyard” so I decided to stick with white. My seven year old son helped me and in his words-we got “cracking” on this cake hack. (If you’ve never baked with a 7 year old boy, you’ve probably never had to stop and wipe batter off your foot like I did.)
I did two 8 inch layer cakes. First impression was that the dough was much thicker than the normal mix cake batter. Second impression was that the batter was very tasty. (Yes, I know. Raw eggs. Whatever.)
The cakes smelled heavenly and my husband impatiently stared at them while they cooled on the rack and offered that he didn’t really need any frosting. I made buttercream frosting anyway and put a thin layer of canned frosting between the layers with the buttercream on the tops and sides.
While I’m not sure I’d call it life changing, it was a very good cake. I’m not great at describing cake texture, but I will say it was less airy or fluffy than a cake mix. It also had a slightly richer taste. I do agree that it tasted more like a bakery cake than just a mix alone. My husband greatly enjoyed it. We worked from home during the later part of the week and I had to smile when I saw him taking a huge piece of cake and glass of milk to his desk.
So yes, this is probably a hack I will continue to use for sprucing up a cake mix cake now and then. Next question, dare I try it on the strawberry cake mix?