Easy Way to Celebrate National Cake Day

Cakery Box box

Friday, November 26, 2021, will once more be National Cake Day. Aside from just buying a cake or making one from scratch, you can use mixes to create something wonderful to help you celebrate this fun food holiday. Today in honor of this forthcoming foodie observance, I'm going to share my experiences with the Cakery Box brand's DIY Baking Activity Kit in the Chocolate Cake Box variety. I tested this out months ago and wrote a review for Amazon Vine which connected me with the business for the purposes for testing the product and reviewing it there. This essay on The Chocolate Cult is an unexpected bonus. Other than the free product, no other form of compensation was received for honestly sharing my experiences.

I debated making a video but honestly that was a lot more effort than I felt like doing back in May 2021 when our old oven went bad and there was a nightmare week of trying to get a new one and get it installed safely. It involved calling our gas company at one point, but I won't rehash that week of stress further today. Instead let's look at how the Cakery Box is designed to be a gift item. Check out how pretty it is when you first open it.

Inside the Cakery Box

Inside was supposed to be everything you'd need except many extra ingredients for the cake and frosting. There is the Moist Chocolate Cake Mix, plastic measuring spoon for 1/2 and 1 tsp, Chocolate Icing Mix tub, plastic liquid measuring cup, silicone whisk, silicone scrapper, and a square aluminum pan. Immediately I noted that the spoon, cup, whisk, and scrapper could probably be cleaned and reused over and over again, depending on how they were cleaned. However, the measuring spoon was never mentioned in the directions so I'm unsure why it was include in the kit at all. Honestly, I don't extra measuring spoons in my kitchen drawers.

Cakery Cake & Frosting Mix

Both the cake and frosting mix have instructions. The frosting requires only warm water but the cake needs egg, water, milk, and oil plus non-stick spray or butter/margarine for the pan. This matters because if you think of this as a gift, you'd want to make sure that the person you are giving it to would have those extra ingredients or give them those items as well. The icing mix is mixed right in the container but you need a box for the cake preparation itself. Note: When I opened the Moist Chocolate Cake packet it nearly cut my figure so be careful. 

I was expecting just a premeasured cake mix but inside were three packets. Sugar mix, a cake mix which looked like the dry ingredients such as flour and cocoa powder plus probably baking soda and salt, and a packet of chocolate sprinkles.

Cakery Cake Mix Ingredients

Mixing the batter was easy using all of the included items. No problem at all. Follow the directions because they may not be in the order you normally follow when using a baking mix or cake making from scratch. To test a product I always follow the directions to the best of my ability. I found the aluminum pan to be a bit flimsy in terms of carrying it to the oven to place it inside so make sure you grip it by two edges or two sides firmly when you move it to bake.

Even with my amazing new oven, it required more than the maximum time to bake, 35 minutes; in total it took 38 minutes before a toothpick stuck into the middle came out clean. I think this is because the batter was so thick for that size of pan. The cake rose a lot, it was literally at the top of the pan. Given how high it raised, I worried about keeping it in the pan to frost, but since the directions did not say to remove it from the pan, I left it in and let it cool on a wire rack for at least 45 minutes (as instructions said). As it cooled down it had this odd image on the top but it was fully cooked the toothpick claimed.

Making the frosting was more of a challenge. The container it came it was too shallow to work well as the bowl to mix it in with whisk included in the kit. The frosting was a powdered sugar and cocoa blend (could tell by both the ingredients and my smell) so it turned out more like a glaze, a more liquidity glaze than I would make if I were creating such a frosting from scratch. I have made such frostings before from basic ingredients so I know you can make it firmer. As you can see in the photo, it wasn't smooth and I whisked as much as I could in such a shallow container. A good amount of the frosting/glaze soaked into the cake and continued to soak in but I put the sprinkles on top as instructed by the kit to do the testing properly.

During the frosting preparation I noticed that the whisk's coating was coming off. That was disappointing because I'd only used it for the cake and I'd gently washed it. Just tossing it in the trash generates unnecessary waste. Below is a close up to show you the coating coming loose.

The most important factor for many folks when it comes to cakes is really the flavor and the texture. It tasted and smelled strongly chocolate and not too sweet. The texture was too moist for me and reminded me more of a pudding cake.

How watery was the frosting? Check out the cake in the pan to give you a better idea. I let the cake cool for two hours before pouring the batter on top of it and I let that set for another three hours before cutting and serving it.

In all, this was a good but not a great cake mix kit unless you dump the frosting mix into a much larger bowl, have another whisk on hand, and add 1-2 less T of water to the frosting.