REVIEW: Professional baker finds best boxed chocolate cake mix to buy - Insider

Verdict: With a moist, flavorful, and consistent result, the Duncan Hines mix takes the cake.

Three slices of chocolate cake on plates with labels of which is which — The Duncan Hines cake was moist and chocolaty.

As a professional baker, I have strong opinions about what makes a good cake.

I might not use cake mixes, but I've certainly seen the box stuff fool people as homemade time and time again, especially if you play around with doctoring the mixes with add-ins and frosting recipes.

When it comes to chocolate cake, I believe the final product really needs to deliver on that chocolate flavor, which Duncan Hines did the best. It nailed that fudgy flavor without being dense or too sweet. It was moist throughout and baked off evenly.

Although Pillsbury also had good flavor, it seemed to suffer from the cardinal cake sin: dryness. The layers were noticeably more domed than the others — as a result, the edges of the cake baked off dry and crumbly even though the center was perfectly cooked. It also resulted in a less clean final slice of cake when frosted.

The Betty Crocker cake had a great fluffy texture that was perhaps even better than Duncan Hines'. But it was quite bland — I didn't taste much chocolate and it relied on the frosting to make it taste delicious.

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