For More Flavorful Box Cakes, Swap Out The Plain Milk

From the best to the worst boxed cake mix, following the instructions ingredient-by-ingredient gives you, at best, a solid dessert that no one will turn their nose up at. If you really want to dazzle a crowd, but still want to keep your recipe easy and straightforward, try swapping out the recipe's plain milk with something that has a little more pizazz.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to use flavored milks, like chocolate or strawberry, as they'll infuse the batter directly with flavor rather than adding to it with things like sliced fruit or chocolate chips. If you really want a moist gourmet dessert, try condensed milk. Since it's quite high in sugar, you'll only want to substitute one quarter of the plain milk with this canned ingredient, but it delivers an incredible level of richness to any boxed mix.

While things like almond milk, oat milk, and other vegan alternatives are viable options, keep in mind that their comparatively low fat content may require you to add more oil or butter to keep the cake moist and soft. However, if you want to get real creative, you can also use more unique non-dairy and non-dairy substitute options like coffee and soda.

If you want to replace water with dairy in the recipe, it is best to use full-fat products. Skim milk will not improve the cake's texture because it lacks fat. However, buttermilk is a great option that has several advantages. It provides a pleasant tang to balance the cake's sweetness, and its acidity activates the baking soda in the batter, causing it to rise higher. This results in a fluffier, more tender cake. You can use sour cream, yogurt, or crème fraîche for similar results. If you don't have it on hand, transform one cup of regular milk into buttermilk by adding one tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar. Give the mixture a stir and allow it to curdle for five minutes before using. Try this technique with chocolate milk for a more flavorful chocolate cake.

Adding melted ice cream to boxed cake mix is another enriching substitution that puts the dregs left by family members to good use. For a decadent cake, use a high-quality ice cream made with cream, milk, eggs, and sugar. You can add richness without changing the flavor by pairing yellow cake with vanilla and chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream, or get creative. Moreso than flavored milk, melted ice cream enables you to experiment with many combinations, including options that contain crushed cookies, chips, and nuts to add crunch and lusciousness to the cake.

When you start branching away from dairy and dairy substitutes as your cake's main source of moisture, you'll need to make some adjustments. These ingredients often contain fat and while too much leaves you with an oily, overly soft confection, too little creates something tough and small, more like bread than dessert.

Adding soda to boxed cake mix gives you incredibly light and fluffy layers of deliciousness. Flavored soda, especially non-diet varieties, are not only great seasonings, but also provide leavening thanks to their carbonation. Keep in mind that boxed cake mixes are already quite sweet, so you may want to use diet soda or even something with no sugar like flavored sparkling water. Also, be careful to not over mix your batter when using anything with carbonation as this can cause the product to go flat and lose its leavening powers.

If you're working with a particularly sweet mix or something heavy on chocolate, instead of swapping out plain milk, try upgrading it with some instant coffee. This is possibly the easiest swap to make as you won't be adding any extra sugar, fat, or water, so it shouldn't affect your cake's texture. Instead, it provides an incredible complexity to your recipe, offsetting sweet with bitter, richness with a bit of acid, creating something that tastes like you were slaving over a hot oven for hours.