The Swap That Makes Your Boxed Cake Mix Taste 10X Richer

We've all been there before — you've promised to make a cake for a gathering, but find yourself running short on time. This is the moment in which the boxed cake mix languishing in your pantry starts to look increasingly appealing. While they are a huge time saver and eliminate a lot of the stress and labor that comes with making a cake from scratch, boxed cake mixes usually pale in comparison to a homemade cake. One of our favorite ingredients that takes boxed cake mix to a new level is browned butter. 

By using browned butter in place of oil in your boxed cake mix, you can add rich, deep notes of flavor like toasted nuts and hints of caramel that would otherwise be impossible to achieve with a boxed cake mix. The texture of the cake will remain mostly the same. Simply swap the oil indicated in the recipe for the same amount of melted browned butter, but make sure it's not too hot as you add it to the batter; it should be cooled to at least room temperature before adding it to the cake mix. 

Brown butter is simple to make, and using a stainless steel or otherwise light-colored skillet will help you see when the color starts to change. Melt the butter over medium heat and begin to stir with a spatula, making sure to scrape up any browning bits at the bottom as they develop. This will take a couple of minutes, and the butter will start to foam, but keep stirring and scraping the bottom. Once there are lots of brown flecks and the butter smells toasted and nutty, remove it from the heat and transfer it to a heat-proof container.

Once you've browned the butter, swap it for the oil in the recipe of your boxed cake mix. But whatever you do when making the nutty, golden liquid, we're begging you not to strain it afterward, as those dark, tiny flecks of caramelized milk solids are what give browned butter its incredible flavor and richness. Without them, your browned butter would be much less flavorful and fairly one-note. Vanilla is probably the best flavored boxed cake mix to pair with brown butter, so it doesn't compete with the cake flavors, but complements them instead. 

We recommend making a large batch of browned butter and freezing it in small portions to use later, as there are so many great uses for brown butter outside of adding it to boxed cake mix. You can also use solidified, room-temperature brown butter in place of regular butter for your cake frosting, which helps to contrast the sometimes sickly-sweet notes of American buttercream. In terms of other ways to improve upon a box of cake mix, a box of instant pudding will add extra moisture to your cake, as well as give it a bit of a softer texture. Additionally, you can add vanilla extract or almond extract to your cake mix, depending on the flavor of the cake mix, of course.