Baking Tips and Helpful Hacks
Everyone knows that pure, homemade, from scratch, baked goods are the best, however, sometimes, you just need a quick fix that still wows the crowd!! It happens to all of us, so I thought I’d give you some baking tips on how to make a box cake mix awesome!
The Predicament
This weekend, we celebrated two of our sons’ birthdays. The party was at our home and we were hosting about 18 people, all of whom expected my typical level of baking ability. The pressure was on, but with my recent schedule, I was very…very… low on time.
Box Cake Mix to the Rescue
I had recently picked up a few box cake mixes on a super sale (because it never hurts to have some on standby) and that gave me an opportunity. There are a variety of tips to make a box cake mix better. I thought this might be a good time to show you guys one of the ways that you can really up your cake mix game!
I will mention in advance, that I am kind of particular about my baked goods…even if I am cutting corners for the sake of time. There are two things that I demand out of all of my baked goods.
1. They HAVE TO BE MOIST AND DELICIOUS and 2. they have to look good.
What I know to be true is that if you start with a good product and follow a couple of basic techniques, you can create wonderful works of culinary art!
Techniques to Keep in Mind
There are a couple of basic techniques that I’ll throw out right now for you to keep in mind. Even when you are short on time, you can still make an awesome product, and when it is a cake that you’re baking, one of my favorite go-to tricks is to mix up the cake and freeze it before you do any frosting or decorating.
The freezing, not only helps the actual decorating process, but it also helps the cake to be moist–and moistness is king! Therefore, if you have a few extra minutes a day or two prior, you can bake and freeze the cake and decorate it later.
Make a Better Batter…
So, now to the actual recipe issue. You can obviously add many different additions to a cake mix to change it up a little. For instance, adding fruit or sprinkles or a whole host of things, but that just adds a little different flavor. Your main goal, when starting with a box cake mix, is to change up the basic boring nature of the mix. Here’s how you do that…
- When the cake mix calls for water, change it to milk.
- When the cake mix calls for oil, change it to melted butter and double it.
- Add an egg to whatever they call for.
- Try adding additional seasoning/spice, etc. (For example, cinnamon goes great with chocolate!)
You can lend a much-needed assist to any basic box cake mix when you are in a pinch. You don’t have to settle for basic when you can make it fabulous! I took a basic, blah, devil’s food cake mix and created chocolate heaven and I took an extremely basic white cake mix and turned it into my Plum Jam Cake…that continues to wow! You can do this too! Anyone can do this!!!
There are so many baking tips and tricks that are out there. I will be adding many, many more in the near future. Be sure to subscribe and get every one of them delivered to you!!
Don’t Miss Seeing the Box Cake Mix Become Something Wonderful!
Don’t miss the next post in our Farm Kitchen section, where you will see the finished products of the above basic cake mix makeovers!
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