I am the kind of person that loves to bake a cake from scratch. Quality counts and all that. But there are times in our lives when a box cake is necessary - like when you have a bridal shower, meetings with clients, photo processing and a birthday dinner all in one weekend. With all of that said, I have found a few cheats that have made me a box cake believer. The picture above is of the cupcakes I made for my sister's bridal shower. It is the simplest alteration in the world: nutmeg. The cake is a yellow box cake that was prepared per the instructions with 4-5 heavy dashes of nutmeg added (test the batter, add until you can just taste it). I call them my doughnut cakes since nutmeg is the spice used in yeasted doughnuts. They were amazing. It spruced up the cake just enough to make it special without it getting so frou frou that a guy wouldn't eat it.
For the birthday party I altered a devil's food cake. This one is also pretty simple: instead of water I used milk, and instead of oil I used melted butter, slightly cooled. It made a denser, richer cake with very little extra work. A word of warning - the cake will not be the came color you are used to - it will be lighter in color due to the milk. The batter actually looked like my home made cake batter. Fabulous and fast.
One last tip - if you have a stand mixer, allow the batter to mix for 5-8 minutes. It gives the batter a uniform texture that makes a soft, velvety cake.
So since I can't always be like my friends from Posh Nosh below, I can fake it pretty well now.
