I love a fancy dessert, but I am not immune to the charm and nostalgia of a simple yellow cake—even one made from a box. There is a time and place for everything, and sometimes, like when you need enough cake to feed 25 hungry children and their parents, cake made from a box mix is exactly what you need. But with so many brands available in grocery stores, it can be difficult to know which is worth keeping in your pantry for those times when you need a simple sweet in a hurry.
So, in our most recent taste test, we pulled together eight different yellow cake mixes you’re likely to find in your local supermarket, baked them up, and sampled them without the tasters knowing which brands they were trying. After tasting our way through eight different yellow cake mixes, we found an overall winner we’d be happy to satisfy our sweet tooth with and even serve to company, as well as several other worthy contenders. Read on for all the details.
The Criteria
Yellow cake is the classic American celebration dessert. For many of our editors, the cake—which tends to come frosted in chocolate or vanilla buttercream and speckled with sprinkles—is reminiscent of childhood birthday parties and other special occasions. Just like a homemade yellow cake, a great yellow cake from a mix should be tender, moist, and fluffy. It should have a hint of vanilla and just enough sweetness to make it delicious enough to eat on its own—but not so much that it tastes like straight-up sugar. And because it’s a yellow cake, it should have a pleasant, lightly golden hue. It doesn’t have to taste homemade, but it should be good enough that you’d happily make it when you’re too tired to bake from scratch and want a stress-free dessert option.
Overall Winner: King Arthur Baking Gluten-Free Classic Yellow Cake Mix
Plot twist! Our winner is…a gluten-free cake. Because we couldn’t get our hands on King Arthur Baking’s Golden Yellow Cake Mix at any grocery stores near us, we opted for their gluten-free mix, which we easily found in Whole Foods, instead. Our tasters loved how moist and fluffy this cake is—our senior social media editor, Kelli Solomon, described it as “very moist and tender,” while our associate visuals director, Amanda Suarez, said, “This is the only one I wanted to eat a whole piece of.”
It's worth noting that at $8.95, this is by far the most expensive cake mix we tried (others ranged from $2.29 to $4.99). It is also the only cake mix that calls for both butter and oil in addition to eggs and milk—he rest called for oil and several eggs. It's also one of only two mixes we tested that requires an electric mixer, while the others require little more than whisking the ingredients together in a bowl. Though slightly fussier than other cake mixes, it did produce an incredibly luscious batter that could have passed for a cake batter made from scratch by beating together butter and sugar until fluffy. With the exception of one taster who detected a slightly gritty texture that can accompany gluten-free flours, everyone else thought it was airy, light, and fairly moist.
Runners Up: Our Favorite Yellow Cake Mixes
The Best Yellow Cake for a Celebration: Trader Joe’s Celebration Cake & Baking Mix
Our editorial director, Daniel Gritzer, thought this tasted like cornbread, which he did not hate. “Cornbread is delicious, but it’s also very specific,” he wrote. Like Daniel, our associate editorial director, Megan O. Steintrager, thought it tasted just like a corn muffin, which she liked (in fact, this was her top-rated cake): “Tender but a bit dry—which sort of works with the corn muffin vibe.” Surprisingly, there is absolutely no cornmeal in the ingredient list for this one. Tasters liked the subtle vanilla flavor of this mix, though some found it a touch too sweet.
This is the perfect all-in-one dessert kit if you don’t want to worry about having to make buttercream from scratch or purchasing sprinkles. The box, which costs just $4.99, comes with a bag of cake mix, frosting mix, and a bag of sprinkles, making it the most seamless and straightforward option for making a celebration cake. (We tasted the cake plain to keep the tests fair, since none of the other cakes included sprinkles or frosting.)
The Moistest Yellow Cake: Duncan Hines Classic Yellow Cake Mix
Everyone commented on how moist this cake was. “Is there such a thing as too moist?” Kelli asked. Daniel thought this yellow cake—which was his overall top pick—had a “nice, light, airy crumb with good tenderness and moisture,” while Amanda deemed it her ideal cake texture. It wasn’t overly sweet and had just the right amount of vanilla.
The Contenders
- King Arthur Baking Gluten-Free Classic Yellow Cake Mix $8.95
- Betty Crocker Super Moist Yellow Cake Mix $2.39
- Duncan Hines Classic Yellow Cake Mix $2.29
- Pillsbury Moist Supreme Yellow Cake Mix $2.49
- Betty Crocker Super Moist Butter Recipe Yellow Cake Mix $2.49
- Bob’s Red Mill Yellow Cake Mix $4.46
- 365 by Whole Foods Classic Yellow Cake Mix $3.49
- Trader Joe’s Celebration Cake & Baking Mix $4.99
In Conclusion
Most yellow cake mixes did not fare well in our taste test. With the exception of the three mentioned above, all other cake mixes were either too sweet, dry, or dense for our liking. Many brands struggled to nail down the vanilla flavor, and some cakes left an unpleasant aftertaste that reminded us of marshmallows or almond extract. Overall, our favorite yellow cake mixes were those that were able to strike a balance between sweetness, salt, and vanilla flavoring, regardless of whether it was artificial or natural vanilla. Unlike many of the cake mixes, our overall winner and runners up were all sweetened with cane sugar and did not contain corn syrup, which speaks to our editors’ preferences for a balanced cake that isn’t cloyingly sweet.
Our Testing Methodology
All taste tests are conducted with brands completely hidden and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill our tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.
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