Cake mixes certainly make it easy to whip up a home baked treated in practically no time at all. However, regular cakes made from mixes don’t seem to have much variation and it’s easy to get sick of them. In addition to this, they don’t leave much room for self expression. Don’t worry, though. There are many ways you can alter a cake mix recipe in order to make your own!
Healthy Substitutions
Sometimes you want a treat without all the guilt. In times like these, you can substitute different ingredients to make the cake a little healthier.
Instead of using oil, use unsweetened apple sauce or clear diet soda. You can also use diet cola if the cake is chocolate flavored. By doing this, you get rid of a lot of unnecessary fat in the cake without compromising on taste, texture, or quality.
Instead of eggs use applesauce, mashed banana, or just egg whites. 1 egg equals about 1/4 cup of applesauce or mashed banana, while 2 egg whites are equal to about 1 whole egg. Substituting the eggs in the cake mix will not only lesson the cholesterol content of the cake, it can also make it vegan friendly if applesauce or banana is used.
Taste Variations
If you want to add unique flavors or textures to your cake, there are several options. For extra moisture and flavor, you can add a packet of instant pudding mix to the prepared batter. Try mixing and matching flavors, like putting a lemon pudding mix into a vanilla cake batter or adding caramel pudding mix into a chocolate cake batter.
Instead of adding oil to the cake mix, add a can of prepared pie filling. This will add the moisture the cake needs while also adding extra flavors. Again, try experimenting with different flavors. Mix cherry pie filling into a chocolate cake, lemon pie filling into confetti cake, blueberry pie filling into a vanilla cake, etc.
To make cookies from a cake mix, just leave out the water that the box calls for. Mix the eggs, oil and cake mix together to form a dough. Drop pieces of the dough onto a cookie sheet and bake for 8 minutes at 375 degrees.