What Is Cake mix and How Can I Use It?

Wondering what to do with cake mix? This guide covers how to pick it, cook it, store it, and swap it, plus 137 recipes to put it to work.

Key Points

Boxed blend of flour, sugar, leavening, and flavor; you just add eggs, oil, and water.
One 15 to 18 ounce box bakes two rounds, a 9x13 sheet, or two dozen cupcakes.
Doctor it with pudding mix, sour cream, an extra egg, and melted butter for a homemade crumb.
Also a base for dump cakes, cookies, and bars, not just layer cakes.
Keeps past its date, but stale leavening bakes flat; store sealed, cool, and dry.

What is cake mix?

Cake mix is the boxed shortcut that turns a layer cake into a five-minute job. Flour, sugar, leavening, and dried flavor come already measured and blended, so all you add is the wet stuff.

One standard box runs around 15 to 18 ounces (about 430 to 510 g). That bakes two 8 or 9 inch rounds or a 9x13 sheet, give or take two dozen cupcakes.

The trade is consistency for control. The leavening is balanced to the flour to the gram, so a box cake rises tall and even every time, which is why it anchors so many decorated cakes here.

The flavor leans sweeter and softer than scratch. That is the part most worth fixing.

Doctoring a Box Mix

The single best upgrade is the "doctored mix" trick. Stir a 3.4 ounce box of instant pudding mix into the dry powder, swap the water for whole milk, then add an extra egg and use melted butter in place of the oil.

The payoff is a denser, moister crumb that tastes far closer to homemade.

Sour cream is the other workhorse. A half cup folded into the batter adds fat and tang that cuts the boxed sweetness, the move behind Italian Sour Cream Cake.

For a richer chocolate, brew the water as hot coffee. For citrus or coconut, replace part of the liquid with the syrup from a can of fruit, the way Favourite Mandarin Orange Cake leans on drained mandarins.

Cupcakes for kids' parties live on plain mixes because they hold a clean dome under fondant and buttercream, which is why Baby Chicks Cupcakes-Easter and the various bunny cakes all start from a box.

Beyond Layer Cakes

A box mix is really just a sweet, pre-leavened dry blend, so it doubles as a base for dump cakes and for cookies and bars. For a dump cake, scatter the dry powder straight over canned fruit, dot it with butter, then bake; no bowl needed.

Cookies and bars work too. Cut the liquid hard: a mix plus two eggs and ½ cup oil gives a stiff dough you can scoop, the idea behind quick Oreo Sandwich Cookies. A pourable batter with extra pudding and chips builds toffee-streaked sheet cakes like Easy Heath Bar Cake.

Substitutes

No box on hand? A basic scratch formula is 2¼ cups flour, 1½ cups sugar, 3½ teaspoons baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt, plus ½ cup fat, 1 cup milk, and 3 eggs. It takes more bowls but you control the sweetness.

Going the other way, you can stretch one mix across recipes that call for a partial box by weight. Just avoid swapping a "pudding in the mix" box for a plain one in a recipe that already adds its own pudding, or the crumb turns gummy and dense.

Buying and Storage

Boxes are sorted by flavor (yellow, white, chocolate, spice, lemon) and by whether pudding is already blended in. White mix uses egg whites only and bakes palest, so it takes color and fondant best for decorated cakes.

Sealed mix keeps in the pantry well past its printed date. The leavening slowly loses lift, though, so a box more than a few months past date may bake flat.

Store it cool and dry. Once opened, seal the liner tight or decant into a jar so it does not pick up moisture or pantry odors. Recipeland has more than 130 recipes built on a box of mix, from sheet cakes to no-bake bars.

Nutrition

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size 1 oz (28g)

Amount per Serving

Calories 120Calories from Fat 29

% Daily Value *

Total Fat 3.2g 5%

Saturated Fat 0.5g 2%

Trans Fat ~

Cholesterol 0mg 0%

Sodium 183mg 8%

Total Carbohydrate 21.9g 7%

Dietary Fiber 0g 1%

Sugars 12.1

Protein 1.2g

Vitamin A 0% Vitamin C 0%

Calcium 4% • Iron 2%

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your caloric needs.

recipeland.com/nutrition

Quick facts

Food group: Cake mix is a member of the Baked Products US Department of Agriculture nutritional food group.

In Chinese: 蛋糕粉
British (UK) term: Cake mix
en français: le mélange à gâteau
en español: mezcla para pastel

How much does cake mix weigh?

Amount	Weight
1 ounce	28 grams
1 package (18.50 oz)	524 grams

Baked Products

Biscuit baking mix (bisquick) 416 Cornbread 49 Bread, french baguette 56 French bread 203 Bread, italian 56 Crusty bread 16 Pita bread 88 Rye bread 48 Bread 571 Bread, white 169

Recipes using cake mix

There are 137 recipes that contain this ingredient.

More cake mix recipes

List of all ingredients

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