Nothing says “celebration” quite like a frosted cake. Slathered with icing, piped-on lettering, or sugar roses (or all of those, because why not? — it’s a party!), a cake is the most festive way to say “happy birthday!” or maybe just “happy Tuesday!”
Americans eat a lot of cake from boxes — 214 million were sold last year, according to the research firm NielsenIQ. And yellow cake is far and away the most popular flavor, with chocolate at second. Many of us just grab the first box we spy at the grocery store, since it’s impossible from the packaging to know which is going to give us the best results. So to determine the mix we should seek out and those to leave behind, we set out to test the field.
To figure out which brands readers are most likely to encounter, we culled a list of the top-selling brands of prepared cake, cupcake and pie mixes from the Chicago-based market research firm IRI (its numbers came from grocery, drug, mass-market, convenience, military, and select club and dollar retailers, and covered the year that ended in January.). We bought yellow cake mix from the brands that offered it to get a total of 10 boxed mixes (private-label brands were No. 5 on the list, so we picked up a few popular grocery-store brands).
For each, we baked the 9-by-13 version, strictly adhering to the directions on each box (for the few that didn’t offer such instructions, we made 9-inch rounds, as directed). Things got off to a not-so-sweet start when the first few cakes came out surprisingly dark brown and leathery. We swapped the nonstick pans we’d been using for standard aluminum ones, and started over — but let this be a lesson about the difference bakeware can make! Only one of these major brands specifies a lower baking temperature for nonstick.
Our eight brave volunteers tasted all 10 samples in a side-by-side, blind test (that is, they didn’t know which brands were which), awarding each up to a score of 10, taking into account appearance, flavor and texture. We gave each panelist a bowl of vanilla buttercream frosting to spread on top, to get the most accurate read on how each cake would perform in the wild.
And something really interesting (and unprecedented for us!) happened: There was a tie for the No. 1 slot. Now, we’ve had ties in previous taste tests, but only for runner-up positions, never for the winner. We really wanted to give our readers a clear overall recommendation, so we took the rare step of conducting a runoff contest (insert election joke here). For this round, we pitted the top two cakes against one another and assembled a fresh panel of five tasters. This process almost resulted in another tie — and if it had, we probably would have just thrown in our floury dish towel and declared the two brands to be co-champions. But the winning cake mix beat the runner-up by a single point. So we have a winner, and also a very solid contender. (That bonus round explains the disparity in scoring; the top two on the list had a potential additional 50 points to pick up in the final battle.)
That’s enough about the methodology — like many an attendee of an office party, you’re probably just here for the cake. And so, without further ado, here’s how those boxes stacked up:
10. Krusteaz Gluten Free Yellow Cake Mix
The bottom two scorers in this taste test happen to be the two gluten-free mixes of the bunch. The Krusteaz sample in particular got dinged for an unappealingly pale hue, which several people likened to banana bread. Its worse-than-dense texture was labeled “firm,” “mealy,” with “no give.” “It’s a brick,” one taster concluded. “Dry, mealy and tough at the same time,” said another. (Price: $4.58 / 18 ounces at Walmart)
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