The Key To Better Boxed Cake Mix Is This Classic Ingredient

There are many ways to hack boxed cake mix into something that tastes homemade, from the social media trick of upgrading your mix with flavored milk to mixing ricotta into your boxed cake for additional texture. One classic boxed cake improvement, however, is an oldie but goodie that uses something you likely already have in your fridge: an extra egg. The pros say that tossing an extra egg into your cake batter — white versus brown eggs makes no difference — will make it denser and more luxuriant, similar to a lovingly prepared homemade cake.

If you compare a cake baked from a boxed mix and one made from scratch, you will notice that the box cake tends to be airier and lighter. Adding an extra egg into the equation can mimic the cakier, more buttery texture of a from-scratch specimen because it brings extra fat into the batter thanks to that yolk. This can be especially useful if you are baking multiple cakes for layering, because the denser cakes are easier to stack and keep stable. 

As for how far you can take it, we've heard of using two extra eggs for what is ideally an even bigger improvement, but proceed with caution here. Internet users have commented that too much of this ingredient can make the cake really "eggy" and cause your crumb to become unpleasantly dense. A good compromise might be using just two egg yolks so that you get the fattiest part of the egg without all the extra protein of the whites.

Baking a cake is, at the end of the day, a chemistry demonstration. Using a boxed mix just compiles the dry ingredients, saving you time and possible frustration. Even if you go this route, you ought to know that every part of a cake batter does something for the final product. Eggs contribute to the light, fluffy texture of cake, which is largely what makes cake different from bread, despite the fact that both use so many of the same ingredients. The proteins and emulsifiers in egg whites and yolks help bind sugar and liquid in the cake batter, as well as adding a bit of leavening. Eggs really are the star of your cake!

Bakers will argue endlessly about the merits of boxed cake versus homemade, acknowledging that boxed mixes can produce more consistent results while claiming that nothing tops the taste of a scratch-made cake. If a homemade-tasting boxed cake is what you are aiming for, you can combine a few classic hacks into one delicious confection. Consider swapping out the required oil for an equal amount of melted butter, changing the water for milk, and adding your extra egg. Again, you probably already have all the ingredients you need for a better cake sitting in your fridge and pantry, while the rest of the mixing and baking procedure is exactly the same. You may find that you never want to exactly follow the instructions on the box ever again!