Which cake mix reigns supreme? I did a taste-test between 5 of the most popular cake mix brands, and here are my results!

Backstory:

As many of you know, I used primarily doctored cake mix recipes on my website and in my cookbook. This means I ignore the directions on the back of the box mix, and add in sour cream, buttermilk, vegetable oil, egg whites, and vanilla (plus other ingredients if I need to amp up a particular flavor profile I’m aiming for). So yes, I use a lot of cake mix at our house!

Some way wonder – does Mandy even know how to bake from scratch? Of course I do! 🙂 I have a few recipes I keep tucked away for when I want to bake from scratch (I always do from scratch for all kinds of desserts (except for brownies… I have yet to find a brownie recipe that’s better than Ghirardelli box mix, haha).

Back to cake: I’ve always had a favorite cake mix that I love to use for my doctored cake mix recipes, but if put to the test, would it be the best one to use? There are so many available at the supermarket… which one should I choose? If my favorite one isn’t available, which one should I go for next? And after that? Is there a particular brand that I should always avoid altogether?

This is where today’s taste-test comes from. Which cake mix, when doctored up the same way across the board, tastes the best? Let’s find out!

Set the stage

For this particular taste-test, I’m using 5 cake box mix brands that are found at most grocery stores in my country (USA). If you’re in a different place in the world, you can do this test, too, with what’s more readily available to you. For my test, I’m sticking with 5 brands of white cake mix with similar, if not the exact same, ounces of dry ingredients per box:

Duncan Hines

Store Brand (Kroger)

Pillsbury

Betty Crocker

Gluten-Free Pillsbury White Mix

(I sifted out the sprinkle jimmies so it would no longer be funfetti).

I know the Gluten-Free will not be similar to the other cakes. However, I’ve always been asked if I can use a gluten-free mix with my white cake recipe. I’ve added it to my test today because I’d like to see how it performs against the other 4 brands. It could be it’s own test against my white cake recipe in itself, why not add it to 4 others, too?

And that’s it! 5 cake mixes, 5 different cakes to taste. I opted for no buttercream on these cakes. I wanted it to be all about the cake this time. We can do a buttercream test another month!

For each doctored cake recipe using these 5 box-mix recipes, I added in the following ingredients, consistent with my white cake recipe.

  • 4 egg whites, room temperature
  • 2/3 cup sour cream, room temperature
  • 3/4 cup buttermilk, room temperature
  • 1/3 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 Tablespoon pure vanilla

I mixed all these ingredients in five different mixing bowls, then sifted the separate cake mixes into their own batch of wet ingredients. At this point, I still needed to keep track of which cake was which, so I ripped off the lids of the cake mix boxes and kept everything in order. I was hoping to do a blind baking test, but it was only me in my kitchen, so I knew the real testing would once again be about the taste, versus the look, of the cake.

Batter Up

For the cake batter, I made a few observations about how they looked and how they baked up before slicing into them. Here’s what I found:

Duncan Hines:

Duncan Hines: The batter itself was pretty thick (kind of like banana bread batter). It was soft, and not runny. When I removed them from the oven, they were very flat, but the exterior was toasted a bit more golden than I’d prefer. It certainly was more brown than some of the other cakes I pulled out that day. The tops also appeared to have certain places that overbaked on top on one of the particular cake rounds. The tops looked so flat that they almost looked like they were caving in a little overall? Maybe I’m just seeing things, but they were flatter than the rest, but not sinking, but not flat? haha. The cakes seemed to pull away from their cake rounds almost immediately while cooling on the rack. They flipped out of the pans pretty well.

Store Brand White Cake:

Store Brand Cake: The batter was very thick and seemed to take up more space in the cake pans than the others. The batter seemed much more white, and baked up faster than the other cakes. The texture on top wasn’t flat, but more matte and uneven in places. When I pulled them out of the oven, as you can see right away, they had a pretty large dip in the center – I assume this is because they needed more time in the oven (when I sliced into them later, they weren’t raw or under-baked in the middle, so the dip could be due to another factor unrelated to the duration of baking). most definitely the tallest and thickest cakes of the test. There appeared to be some pretty big air pockets on the crumb from the look on the outside. They felt dense/heavy and had less give. They looked gorgeous! I was anxious to taste them.

Pillsbury

Pillsbury: The batter was super light and fluffy looking. Everything mixed in really well. They baked up evenly, with a few places on top that looked a bit more golden than others. The cake rounds themselves were even and came right out of the pan really well. The color wasn’t as dark as the Duncan Hines, but still had more color than the store brand mix. The top color before flipping them out was super white and had an almost shiny look in places.

Betty Crocker:

Betty Crocker: The batter was pretty loose – definitely the most runny of the batches I made for this test. It seemed more like actual cake batter, haha. They baked up super tall and had the same dark-ish golden on the outside like the Duncan Hines. The tops of them, however, were super flat and very even – with maybe a couple shallow cracks on the mostly-white top. They came out the pan beautifully. They felt super thick, but not heavy and dense like the store brand. Everything was super similar to the Duncan Hines results so far. Pleasantly surprised by this one.

Gluten-free Pillsbury Mix

Gluten Free Pillsbury: This one had the stickiest dough and baked up really short. The top was super uneven and had a texture on top like the moon, haha. But they smelled wonderful and came out of the pan really well. The outside texture was even on the sides (not the top), and had only slightly golden coloring on the outsides. They felt fluffy and delicate when I flipped them over, but held their shape well.

Side-By-Side

There’s a slideshow below to show more of a side-by side comparison up close of the cake exteriors. You can see the differences in color and height, as well as the crumb density between the 5 cake brands.

Next here’s a better visual for the color difference between the cakes. The store brand was by far the whitest, followed by the Gluten Free Pillsbury, and then a toss up between the Duncan Hines, Pillsbury, and Betty Crocker mixes. There’s one DH mix that looks like it’s as dark as Betty.

Below we have the height difference – Gluten Free Pillsbury is the shortest, Duncan Hines and Pillsbury ties next, Store Brad next, and then Betty was most certainly the tallest of the lot.

Side note – a lot of you have already commented on how even these cake rounds have baked up. This is because of the doctored mix recipe, and also because I properly prepared the pans before baking each and every one of them (a swipe of shortening and dusting of all purpose flour). It really does make a huge difference, and certainly helped in making a visually pleasing aesthetic while comparing cake rounds!

INSIDE STORY

And now for the moment this was all for… TASTE! Before the taste-test, I sliced one round from each cake set in half. I’ve saved the other rounds for cake pops and demo cakes (they will all be used, I promise!).

For the taste-test, I sliced off the outside of the cakes, and then we tested a small cube of each cake (all we could see was the white, so there was almost zero way to differentiate between them at first glance).

Here’s what they look like on the inside, as well as the taste-test results:

Duncan Hines:

Duncan Hines: White even crumb, super thick, very moist. The layers sliced really well. There was a good balance in flavor. It was fluffy and soft, and had a good vanilla-white cake flavor. It was sweet, but not overly artificial in taste. Y’all know I’m a sucker for Duncan Hines and have baked with it for years, so I recognized this one right away.

Store Brand Cake Mix

Store brand cake: Right away I noticed the impressive height and color, but when I sliced into it there were large holes in the crumb! Large air pockets formed during the baking process. The first bite of this cube was super sweet, but in an artificially-sweet way. It had a fluffy texture, but the taste was unpleasant, like really bad fake-y pancake batter. It was moist, though. I suspected this one not being one of the best, and I was right.

Pillsbury

Pillsbury: Right away I noticed there was an uneven crumb with a few large air pockets in the cake layers. It initially was more sweet (kind of like clear vanilla-tasting). It tasted more dense than the DH and had a more strong flour taste than the other three that weren’t the gluten-free version. The white color was perfect, though, and it wasn’t too fluffy. Very moist.

Betty Crocker:

Betty Crocker: This one had a lovely crumb, despite some minimal air pockets in my cube. It was more crumbly than the DH, but had good flavor. It didn’t have the artificial taste that the Pillsbury and Store Brand cakes had. I was pleasantly surprised at how well this one tasted. I thought it was DH for most of the test! That’s a good sign! However, the crumbly texture gave it away at the end when I was narrowing it down to the final two choices.

Gluten-Free Pillsbury

Gluten-Free Pillsbury: This one I recognized right away, and that’s okay! It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just had a more dense taste – okay, a WAY more dense taste. But I’ve had that experience with a lot of gluten-free recipes, so I kind of expected it. It still had a great taste, not too sweet, but was slightly grainy? I actually liked it a lot more than I thought it would, and this has inspired me to try to doctor up this gluten-free mix in a way that would be less dense, and more like the others. Again, super surprised at how well this one held up against the competition! It’s a great gluten-free alternative. I wonder how it would hold up against other gluten-free white cake recipes.

ALL Stacked Up

As you can see, they all look VERY Similar. They all have a lovely white shade. However, it’s pining through the crumb where I see the most difference between them (very small differences, but hey, it’s what we were working with visually). My husband said they all look like the same cake from this angle, and I think he’s right! haha

Let’s dial it in closer, shall we?

Check out that crumb up close! I find it super fascinating. You are viewing top to bottom: Gluten Free, Pillsbury, Duncan Hines, White Cake, and Betty Crocker on bottom in the photo.

RESULTS

I’m pretty sure most of you scrolled to the bottom just to see this part, haha. It’s okay, a TLDR version isn’t available for how I achieved these results, but know this – a couple of them were really similar and really close to taking home the trophy.

5. Store Brand Cake Mix

4. Gluten-Free Pillsbury

3. Pillsbury

2. Betty Crocker (by a SMALL margin!)

1. Duncan Hines (by a SMALL margin!)

So yes, Betty and Duncan were buddies at the top. I almost didn’t know if it was a Betty or Duncan cake when I was tasting them both. I went back and forth (this is where I consumed the most cake, haha).

In conclusion, if I’m at the store and have to choose between Duncan Hines and Betty, either one would produce similar results. Betty would be taller, DH would be consistent, they both would rock your socks.

However, we all know my first love is DH. So I had to take it to the streets again, haha. I only sampled 15 people this time, and most of them didn’t like the Gluten-Free Pillsbury or the Store Brand Mix. A couple of them liked the Pillsbury, but for the most part, it was Betty & DH.

I hope this helps as you are selecting your own cake mixes at the store to use in your doctored up cake mix recipes! Again, this is a test for only the white cake. I’m sure there may be different results for chocolate, red velvet, lemon, spice, strawberry cake, etc.

As always, I hope this post inspires you to do your own test in the kitchen and see & taste which one YOU love the most for your doctored cake baking! I’d love to hear all about it on IG @bakingwithblondie.

Happy Baking!

xo,

Mandy