The Best Betty Crocker Chocolate Cake Mix We Tried Still Isn't As Good As Other Top Brands

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In one Reddit thread, multiple bakers share their techniques for doctoring up Betty Crocker brand boxed cake mixes. Comments suggest swapping the water for milk, using melted butter instead of oil, tossing in an extra egg, and adding ingredients like lemon zest or almond extract — which might totally work. Call us snobs, but here at Tasting Table, we like our boxed cake mixes to be ready-to-use on their own. That's kind of the whole point of a convenience-centric product, right? All of this is to say, when it comes to chocolate cake mixes, Betty Crocker brand falls pretty far behind competitor offerings.

In our ranking of 13 popular boxed chocolate cake mix brands, we taste-tested several different Betty Crocker varieties. Alas, the highest any of the products ranked was No. 6 (chocolate fudge Super Moist). Across the entire category, boxed mixes by Pillsbury, Krusteaz, King Arthur Baking Company, and Duncan Hines outranked Betty Crocker's offerings by a longshot.

Taste-testing No. 6, our reviewer noted that the mix was "very dry and mediocre," concluding, "It's not a bad cake mix per se, but it's just not one I would personally buy myself." That was our highest praise of any Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix in the roundup. We expressed similar lackluster criticisms with the brand's Delights Super Moist triple chocolate fudge cake mix, which pulled a dismal #9, followed by Super Moist devil's food cake mix at #11, and Super Moist milk chocolate cake mix at #12 (yikes).

Even on the official Betty Crocker website, customer reviews of the Chocolate Fudge Super Moist cake mix mention that they "Can't taste the chocolate fudge flavor, but it's ok with peanut butter on top." Walmart customer reviews agree, "[I]t really had little Chocolate Flavor and was disappointing," and "[N]o taste other than just sweet." One Target reviewer echoes our critiques almost exactly: "I don't expect authentic chocolate flavor from a box mix, but even compared to other boxed chocolate cake mixes, this tastes awful. I get no chocolate flavor at all, just baking soda, cardboard, and a hint of vegetable oil." Even though Tasting Table ranks Betty Crocker as a better cake mix brand (at large) than Duncan Hines, when it comes to chocolate cake mix specifically, we preferred Duncan Hines' offering to Betty Crocker's.

All in all, we would be remiss to deny Betty her due credit. The brand's chocolate cake mixes are affordable, convenient pantry staples that can certainly satisfy a late-night chocolate cake craving. We also appreciate that the mixes only require oil, water, and eggs to come together (some of the products in our taste-test also require melted butter). But, other boxed cake mixes out there can get the job done even better, and at a similar price point. We generally love Miss Crocker, but chocolate cake is one arena in which she definitely has some work to do.