The Forgotten '60s Betty Crocker Cake Mix That Revived A '40s Trend — Then Disappeared

Head to almost any grocery store today and you'll find a range of Betty Crocker cake mixes. Many are variations on vanilla or chocolate, but Betty Crocker also has a history of producing more unusual flavors — like chocolate malt and ginger, the latter of which was Betty Crocker's first-ever mix. Another boxed cake flavor you can't get anymore is the Sunkist Orange Layer Cake Mix.

This citrusy Betty Crocker product debuted sometime around the winter of 1968 alongside a chiffon cake mix and frosting mix, all in Sunkist Orange flavor. The ads for all three said they were made with natural flavor from orange peels. In the present day, this sounds like a tasty retro cake, but that's also what it was back in 1968. Betty Crocker was actually reviving a 1940s cake trend.

In 1948, Betty Crocker published recipes for orange chiffon cake. Newspaper ads, like one printed in The Ingham County News in Michigan, touted it as the "first really new cake in 100 years" (via Capital Area District Libraries). Chiffon cake had only been invented just over 20 years earlier in 1927, and General Mills — Betty Crocker's parent company — bought the recipe in 1947. The orange version was a novel variation on a cake that had only just been introduced to home bakers. The Sunkist Orange Cake from the 1960s was revisiting a part of Betty Crocker's history from the 1940s.

The 1948 orange chiffon cake recipe included the zest of two oranges in the batter itself, while the cream cheese icing also included orange zest and a touch of orange juice. This was not just a cake with orange frosting; the orange flavor was all throughout. The cake mix version had to be a little different, though, since it was not being made fresh. For example, the Sunkist Orange Frosting Mix package shows the ingredients and, after some standard items like sugar and shortening, lists Sunkist Perma-Stabil natural orange flavor. Perma-Stabil was a proprietary flavor encapsulation process invented by chemists at Sunkist in 1962 to maintain the orange taste in shelf-stable products. This particular ingredient would have given the Betty Crocker cake a specific citrusy flavor.

It's unclear how long the Sunkist Orange Cake Mix was available. Some sources say it was discontinued in the early 1970s, but that's difficult to confirm. Because the cake hasn't been sold in decades, it's hard to find anyone who even remembers what it tasted like. Duncan Hines has an Orange Supreme Cake Mix that's made with natural flavors and orange juice, which may be similar, but it's hard to say. Betty Crocker also offers orange cake mixes internationally, but these contain artificial orange flavoring. If you want to know what started it all, it's worth making a cake from scratch. We have an orange chiffon cake recipe you could try if you want to see what Betty Crocker was trying to revive. Maybe it's deserving of a second comeback.