This Discontinued 1950s Duncan Hines Cake Mix Was Inspired By A Classic Treat In New England

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Duncan Hines has been stirring up baked goods for over 50 years now — plenty of time for the company to experiment with and then discard discontinue several of their boxed mixes. One such case is that of their Burnt Sugar Cake Mix, which exited store shelves sometime after its launch in the mid-1950s. Duncan Hines did promote the mix with multiple luxe print ads – advertising that each box came with a special packet of burnt sugar syrup that went into the batter and would replicate the taste of the caramelized sugar that's so central to the flavor of the cake. There's no word why they pulled the mix, but it didn't last very long and disappeared from supermarket shelves.

Burnt sugar cake — which tastes an awful lot like the caramelized sugar you get atop a crème brûlée –  has deep roots in the U.S. South. Black chefs used white sugar to replicate the taste of brown sugar when it couldn't be found in a post-Emancipation world. And thus, the original recipe for burnt sugar cake became popular in the 1800s. The recipe then spread throughout the country in the early 1900s. From there, it became a popular special occasion cake, brought out on holidays or for church functions.

That northward spread of burnt sugar cake recipes caused it to become closely associated with the New England area; even poet Emily Dickinson even had a recipe for it. By the 1940s and 1950s, it more closely resembled a caramel cake, at least in looks, though with a much richer flavor. It was a traditional layer cake in shape now, frosted with burnt sugar icing and laced on top with amber-colored sauce. By the 1960s, it was replaced with other popular taste sensations in the public zeitgeist; Duncan Hines' brief attempt to introduce a mix was rejected by consumers, and the cake fell out of favor as the years marched by.

In more recent years, burnt sugar cake has started to see a renaissance among home bakers, who have begun to bring the dish back to its traditional place in social circles. While a mix for the recipe currently isn't being sold in stores, there are plenty of recipes — both vintage and newfangled — which will allow you to bake a decadent cake and replicate its home-crafted taste any time you'd like. It's a fitting fate for a recipe that's been handed down from generation to generation and cook to cook over the years.