HOW TO :: DENSE UP A CAKE MIX

the title may seem a little unimaginative, but believe me, this post is worth a little meander through. one of my favorite bakery tricks ( and one of mitch's, as well ), is densing up a plain, old, regular cake mix. and in honor of my birthday, I thought I'd enable all of your sweet tooths and share with you one of my favorite kitchen hacks. without any help, box mixes tend to turn out dry and fall apart. when the need for cake is breathing down your neck, like I know it does with me, you don't always have the time to whip one up from scratch. ergo, densing up that dry, weak mix with a few scratch ingredients can make that cake taste like you spent hours in the kitchen rather than a mere 20 minutes. I picked this trick up from my cake decorating teacher who adapted this recipe from the wilton extendacake during my culinary undergrad--a total life saver since I was making a cake every couple of days. so without any further adieu, densing up that crumbly cake mix ::

the recipe

1 package of your favorite cake mix

all of the ingredients called for on the back of the box

1 cup all purpose flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 cup softened butter

2/3 cup water

the method

beat the butter, then add in all of the box ingredients and then all of the additional ingredients. blend on low for one minute, then on medium for two minutes. scrape your bowl. you'll end up with about 6 and a half cups of batter. bake at 325 degrees fahrenheit for a large cake or at 350 degrees fahrenheit for smaller cake pans. you might need to add 10-15 minutes to the bake times on the back of the box. I use really shallow pans to facilitate the frosting-to-cake ratio that prefer and only had to bake for 30 minutes total. then, of course, frost it and load that baby down with lots and lots of sprinkles. you know how I love my sprinkles! #obsession.

and that's it. pretty simple, yeah? go ahead and give this a go and let me know how you get on with it in the comments. happy baking!

love, arielle

p.s. don't leave out the baking powder like I did above, it still tastes rich and moist, but it had a little trouble not sticking to the pan. whoops.