Make Duncan Hines Cake Mix Taste Homemade With 2 Swaps (And A Few Additions)

Compared to making a cake 100% from scratch, a boxed cake mix is so much quicker, easier, and generally less stressful and time consuming from start to finish. The only drawback of a boxed cake mix, however, is that the result is usually subpar compared to a cake made from scratch or from a bakery. Thankfully, there are ways to make a boxed cake mix taste bakery worthy without any additional ingredients. For this method, though, you'll only need a couple of pantry staples to take your cake from passable to wonderful. 

Boxed cake brand Duncan Hines recommends two swaps you can implement to make a cake mix taste more moist and homemade. The first swap is to replace the water required in the recipe for milk. Whole milk will give you the richest results, but any type of milk will still taste more luxurious than water. Compared to water, milk has fat that will not only give the cake a better texture, but it will also help to carry flavor throughout the entire cake. 

The second swap Duncan Hines suggests is to use melted butter instead of a bland oil like vegetable oil. Butter will lend more flavor to the overall cake, giving it an added note that a neutral oil just can't replicate. If you have enough time or forethought, try using brown butter instead of regular butter, as brown butter is the secret ingredient your baked desserts are missing. The nutty, deep flavor of the brown butter will add another slight level of flavor to your cake. 

In addition to using milk and butter in place of water and oil, there are a few more ways you can jazz up a boxed cake mix. The easiest tip is to add a teaspoon of vanilla extract to the batter — bonus points if it's real vanilla and not imitation extract. Simply mix it into the milk you're using for the cake batter before adding the milk to the mix. Duncan Hines also suggested adding an extra egg into the cake batter, as the egg white can help add more lift to the cake while the yolk lends more richness overall, however more than one additional egg is ill advised, as it can mess with the proportions of the overall recipe.

For an incredibly rich and moist cake, consider adding a large dollop of yogurt or sour cream into the mix as well. You can even add a box of pudding mix into the cake batter, as long as you make sure it's instant pudding and not cook-and-serve pudding. Adding instant pudding has a similar effect on boxed cake that yogurt and sour cream does, as it adds moisture, so we suggest only using one or the other rather than pudding and a thick dairy product. For even more ways to improve your next boxed cake confection, use a home baker's wildly popular boxed cake mix hacks.