The (Cake) Doctor Is Still in the House

In the world of Southern baking, a box of cake mix is a versatile tool. Just add a little of this and a little of that — chocolate chips, a can of cherries, grated lemon zest, or a box of strawberry Jell-O — and you’re on your way to baking bliss.

My mother was a scratch cook, so was her mother, and I’m sure her mother. Baking a cake from scratch was what you did back then — until you tasted your friend’s moist and cinnamony coffee cake and begged her for the recipe.

She’d stammer and pause and deflect, “It’s really not a recipe.”

And you’d wonder if she wasn’t the recipe-sharing sort of person. Some people are like that, you know.

Or if it really wasn’t her recipe. Or worse yet, she’d bought the coffee cake.

But truth be told, she’d made it with a mix.

That’s how my mother started baking with cake mixes. She didn’t intend to bake with them. Like I said, she was a scratch cook. Homemade biscuits every morning, a meat and five vegetables for supper, hand-carved watermelon boats and ice cream parfaits for parties. Everything she touched was extraordinary.

And when she tasted something good, she didn’t care if it started with a mix.

So my mother and her sisters and friends amassed an impressive collection of delicious, creative cake recipes including apricot nectar cake, the Darn Good Chocolate Cake, and cinnamon coffee cake — all unapologetically starting with a box.

Mother always said you can get away with a cake mix, but you absolutely must make your frosting from scratch. And there was plenty of time for that while the cake was baking. We’d stir together butter, cocoa, sugar, and a little milk in a saucepan and let it come to a simmer. Once that cake was out of the oven and cooled down, we’d spread on that velvety fudge icing and fight over who got to lick the spoon. No one would think for a minute that the cake started with a box!

These were the recipes that wafted like Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton’s music through Nashville in the 1970s. When I moved back to Nashville in 1994 from Atlanta and a year in England, it was as if time stood still. People baked a few scratch cakes, but they still baked cake mix cakes, too. This is why I wrote a story about them for our morning newspaper, The Tennessean.

I was really trying to get out of town with my family and go on vacation. I needed to pull together a quick column at the last minute. The gist was that you can open a box of cake mix, add some fresh ingredients from your kitchen, and turn a mix into a masterpiece. 

And at the end of the column, I added a simple request, “I’ve shared my recipes, now please share yours.”

Lo and behold, the temporary desk I had been assigned in the newsroom was blanketed in mail when I returned from vacation a week later. More than 500 recipes arrived from cooks who not only baked cakes with mixes but clearly wanted to tell me about them.

One of my favorite recipes came from Stacy Ross of Nashville, who shared a chocolate chip Bundt cake she’d gotten from her high school friend’s mother back in 1976. The cake called for grating German chocolate, and after scraping up many knuckles using a cheese grater, Stacy’s husband bought her a food processor for Mother’s Day when they were expecting their first of four children.

It was a story that resonated with readers for a variety of reasons. Some people, like Stacy, understood how cake mixes set you up for baking success, and others were just fascinated reading about it. The story was picked up by wire services and fed to newspapers from Denver to Orlando, going viral before things went viral. Readers called me asking when I was going to bake their cake and share it in the newspaper. 

Within six months I’d turned that story into The Cake Mix Doctor, a book aimed at helping people bake a cake when they don’t have a lot of time or don’t even know how to bake a cake. I included Stacy’s cake, which turned out to be one of the book’s most popular recipes. And I shared all of our family’s homemade frostings. 

There’s a good chance that there’s a cake mix in that strawberry cake from your favorite restaurant, the caramel cake you order online, or your grandmother’s coconut icebox cake. Cake mixes create cakes that are inexpensive, moist, and good keepers. 

It has to do with the pudding mix added to the recipe, the sour cream, the extra eggs, and most certainly, the emulsifiers in the mix itself. Moistness is quite possibly the number one attribute of a Southern cake, and if you bake a pound cake using a cake mix, a recipe like almond cream cheese pound cake or sherry poppy seed cake, that cake will stay moist for days. Sometimes a week!

The cake that my mom loved so much came from her friend Nancy Bradshaw, who baked the super-moist cinnamon streusel coffee cake for a bridge luncheon. Mother came home with the recipe scribbled on the back of a score sheet. It called for extra eggs, pudding mix, and sour cream. She had indeed had a winning day!

And Darn Good Chocolate Cake?

That cake has been our family’s favorite for as long as I can remember. My Aunt Louise called it “damn good” chocolate cake, which is what Louise said about a lot of things. With pudding mix, eggs, sour cream, oil, and chocolate chips, who knew you could doctor up a cake mix with so much decadence, bake it in a Bundt, and, once you’d had your fill, reheat leftovers in the microwave? When we staged a family reunion several years ago and baked favorite recipes of my late mother and aunts, Louise’s daughters insisted we bake that “damn good” cake in her memory. 

We also baked dump cakes, perhaps the laziest cake on earth, where you layer dry cake mix, canned fruit, and melted butter in a pan before baking, as well as poke cakes — pouring gelatin into holes poked in a cake — and chocolate-covered cherry cake, a Pillsbury Bake-Off winner using canned cherries in place of the oil. What really made that cake sing — still does — is the homemade chocolate fudge icing. 

Apricot Nectar Cake was a beauty, with a bright warm coral color — but alas, you can’t find apricot nectar on the juice aisle anymore, so I don’t bake it.

If there’s a downside to cake mix cakes, it’s that they are dependent on the supermarket shelf. About 10 years ago, the mixes themselves shrank from 18.25 ounces down to 16.5 or 15.25 ounces,  and I didn’t for a minute buy Ms. Crocker’s or Mr. Hines’ explanation that it had to do with improvement. It had to do with greed, plain and simple, and it hijacked many a favorite cake mix recipe.

People were calling and emailing, needing immediate counseling on how to remedy their favorite recipe. Since then, folks have created up-sizers of flour and leavening to make up the difference. But I think that’s an inconvenience and strays from the core principle that you save time starting with a mix. So I retested many of the favorite recipes through the years using these smaller mixes and ended up writing another book.

And it’s not just cake mix. Even strawberry Jell-O has gotten hard to find for strawberry cake in my local grocery, although thankfully I can still find a box of lemon Jell-O for my sister’s lemon Bundt. I guess people just don’t eat as many Jell-O salads as they did before.

About the time I was writing the The Cake Mix Doctor, my sister, Susan, gave me her recipe for a moist and citrusy cake she’d take to new neighbors in Atlanta, a grieving family after a funeral, and hopefully to us when she came to visit. My kids loved that cake and the way it signaled summer vacation.

Unknowingly, it also became the favorite cake of actress Jamie Lee Curtis, and she once went on the “Rachael Ray Show” and told the world how much she loved Susan’s cake. I caught up with her later to thank her, and she said not being a skilled baker, she was drawn to the ease of a cake mix, and that cake in particular makes her look good. (I personally don’t think Jamie Lee needs any help to look good, but I’m happy she’s adopted my sister’s cake.)

And that’s another thing about cake mix recipes. They get passed around a lot and named after people, and you never know who first created them. In truth, Susan says the real credit should go to her friend Sally Roy, who shared the recipe with her.

As much as I understood firsthand why someone would want to reach into their pantry for a cake mix because I’ve lived that busy, frantic life with children underfoot, it wasn’t easy going on book tour and being the “doctor” 20 years ago.

It seemed in every big city, I was greeted by a disgruntled food writer ready to take me on for sharing dirty little secrets with home cooks and tainting what they believed to be “the true legacy of American baking.” 

They just didn’t get the fact that I was a scratch cook, too, had studied pastry in Paris, and that I looked at using a mix in the same way as I might pick up the slender icing spatula when I was ready to frost the sides of a cake. It was a tool. 

To me, cake mix cakes were for busy days. Scratch cakes were saved for special occasions when I had a bit more time. Looking back, I had been taught how to bake a scratch cake and could make that choice. I realize now many cooks have not had this luxury and don’t have the time to bake anything else but a box mix.

I’ve had bakers tell me they no longer bake scratch pound cake and prefer my almond cream cheese pound cake because it’s easier, with no need to bring eggs to room temperature. And I once received an email from a hotel pastry chef pleading with me to help her turn her scratch cakes into softer, moist, cake-mix-like cakes so that her executive chef, who was raised on cake mix, would be happy with them. I highly recommended instant pudding mix!

Today, my daughters are grown and bake cakes using mixes and without, just like we did when they were growing up. (My son, 23, hasn’t started baking any cakes yet, but I’m still hopeful!) They say their friends rely on mixes, and they’re not ashamed of it. In fact, that is the appeal. Mixes are approachable to the inexperienced baker, and besides, who doesn’t love a good shortcut?

And it’s really all about the appearance, isn’t it? Creating a beautiful, sprinkle-covered Confetti Cake or a marbled chocolate layer cake with ganache that’s Instagram-worthy.

And they like the fact that celebrity chefs like Christina Tosi have embraced the “cake mix” taste you find in yellow mix and flavor their homemade frostings with it.

They like the fact, too, that cake mix is inexpensive, something that appeals to millennials and, frankly, all generations. 

This was really brought home when I interviewed North Carolina cookbook author Von Diaz for my new book. She told me the story of her working mother, how their finances were tight, and how her mother would buy box mixes on sale and bake rum cakes to thank the people who had helped their family. A cake mix became “a marker of true skill” in her Puerto Rican Atlanta-area kitchen.

If you keep a cake mix in your pantry, you don’t need to buy flour, sugar, or leavening, which makes baking a cake cheaper and more accessible to all. And that cake will cost a fraction of what you’d pay to buy it from a bakery. I was curious just how affordable a cake mix would be to feed 50 people, so in my new book, I created a recipe using two cake mixes, one sheet pan, and a homemade frosting. That cake costs only 10 to 15 cents per serving.

Besides, a cake mix can be liberating. I received an email early on from a reader who said The Cake Mix Doctor was a “godsend” feminist book. It allowed her to bake a cake but not spend the entire day doing it. 

Today I’m baking cakes differently, using less frosting, craving bolder and fresher flavors, and swapping coconut milk for whole milk because it makes moister cakes and is always in my pantry. I’m baking vegan cakes and gluten-free cakes as well as cakes in loaf pans, skillets, and springforms.

I feel like baking a cake seems less competitive and more collaborative now. Granted, there is a lot of polarization in this country, but I don’t hear people criticizing each other because they used a cake mix. Could baking a cake become an olive branch?

Maybe that’s one of the many lessons learned from the challenges of the last 18 months  — to appreciate a home-baked cake and check any judgment at the kitchen door.

Whether you bake from scratch or use a mix, it’s still baking. And it’s still sharing something good with other people. And that’s not limited to the South.

I think we should all go bake a cake and be done with it. (Well, maybe a quick glaze to pour over the top, too.) And then wait for someone to beg us for the recipe.

If you look at this recipe, you might wonder why so many folks are crazy about a cake with so few ingredients. That’s one answer. It’s a snap to make, and it also has a moist texture, a distinctive lemon flavor, and is suitable any time of the year. I’ve upped the lemon flavor, adding freshly grated zest to the cake batter in addition to the glaze.

Makes 12 servings
Prep: 15 to 20 minutes
Bake: 30 to 35 minutes 

Vegetable cooking spray or shortening, for greasing the pan
All-purpose flour, for dusting the pan
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 to 1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar, or as needed
1 (15.25-ounce) package yellow cake mix
1 (3-ounce) package lemon gelatin
3 large eggs
2/3 cup hot tap water
2/3 cup vegetable oil

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease and flour a 12-cup Bundt pan. Set the pan aside.

2. Place 1 teaspoon of the lemon zest and the lemon juice in a small bowl. Whisk in enough confectioners’ sugar to create a pourable glaze. Thin with a little water if needed. Set the glaze aside.

3. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the cake mix, gelatin, and remaining 1 teaspoon lemon zest. Add the eggs, water, and oil. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until blended, about 30 seconds. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat until the batter is smooth, about 1 minute. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top with a rubber spatula.

4. Place the pan in the oven and bake until cake is golden brown and the top springs back when gently pressed in the middle, 30 to 35 minutes. 

5. Let the cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes. Run a long knife around the edges of the cake, shake the pan gently, and invert the cake onto a wire rack or cake plate. If you are using a rack, slide a piece of wax paper or parchment paper under the rack to catch drips. Pour the reserved glaze over the cake. (If desired, you can poke holes in the cake with a chopstick or skewer and let the glaze dribble into the holes.) Let the cake cool at least 20 minutes longer before slicing. Store, lightly covered, at room temperature for up to five days.

Latest Feature

Shop the General Store

Support Southern Storytelling