Pudding Is The Secret Ingredient Your Boxed Cake Mix Needs

Pudding in boxed cake mix is the ultimate ingredient for an easy dessert hack that will banish the days of dry, underwhelming boxed cake. With instant pudding you're promised a rich, moist texture with strong depth of flavor and a made from scratch quality. Bobbie Lloyd, chief executive at New York City's iconic and acclaimed Magnolia Bakery revealed to The New York Times that instant pudding is used in Magnolia's best-selling banana pudding. Lloyd shares, "There is something about the flavor of banana pudding with Jell-O instant vanilla pudding that you can't replicate with a homemade pastry cream."

The best way to use pudding in boxed cake is to combine a three to four-ounce container of dry instant pudding mix with a 15 to 18-ounce box of cake mix before bringing in your wet ingredients. Add an extra egg, ½ a cup of sour cream, or a ¼ cup of water if desired to balance out the extra dry ingredient. If you're interested in breaking more rules, you can amplify your cake even more by disregarding another pesky boxed cake instruction and ditching the vegetable oil for a more flavor-forward fat.

Now that you know how to best customize your cake and upgrade your dessert, it's time to consider flavor combinations. Before throwing ingredients together, remember that pudding mix often comes with food coloring, so the hue of the pudding may affect the final color of your cake. A strawberry cake combined with chocolate instant pudding will turn the cake a muddy pinkish brown color, for instance.

If you need a little inspiration, some of the most complementary boxed cake and pudding combinations include: triple chocolate fudge cake with chocolate fudge pudding, spice cake with butterscotch pudding, carrot cake with cheesecake pudding, and lemon cake with lemon pudding. Elevating your boxed cake mix doesn't have to start and stop with Jell-O or similar instant pudding brands, either. There are plenty of underrated ingredients worth adding to boxed cake mix ranging from espresso to soda. What's more, boxed cake mix doesn't have to be used for cake to taste delicious. It can readily enhance plenty of sweet treats from whoopie pies to cinnamon rolls.