How Can Turn A White Cake Mix Into Spice Cake

Piece of cake Yellow or White Block Mix Spice Cake Recipe

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The finished product!

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Add But Three Extra Ingredients

If you're longing for the flavor of an erstwhile-fashioned spice cake but don't want to accept the fourth dimension and trouble to bake one from scratch—and all you lot've got in the pantry is a plain vanilla, yellow or white block mix—go alee and indulge your craving past adding just the right combination of allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg to your cake mix.

No allspice? No problem, as long equally you have ground cloves.

Read ahead for both versions (the allspice version and the ground cloves version), each of which allows you to easily plough a plain boxed block mix into something really special.

A Decades-onetime, Tried and Truthful, Tested Recipe From McCormick Spice Co.

Many years ago, I was throwing a dinner party for my brother, who had simply become engaged. The dinner party was to exist the first meeting of our parents and his fiancé'due south parents—so I wanted everything to go just right. I call up the card included roasted salmon with ginger, and I was stumped as to the perfect dessert to serve. On the solar day of the dinner party, I decided the perfect dessert for this meal was a spice cake with foam cheese frosting. I was in the thick of cooking and cleaning and didn't take time to make a cake from scratch. I did accept a yellow cake mix and a spice rack stocked with an array of little drinking glass bottles, so it seemed perhaps a spice block was possible.

This was the pre-cyberspace era, and then in that location was no "Googling" for "cake-mix hacks." Luckily, when I pulled out my little metal tin of McCormick ground allspice, there was the very recipe I needed, right on the box. Fortunately, I had all the ingredients: cake mix, allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The recipe was incredibly quick and easy, and that evening we all enjoyed a slice of "homemade" spice cake with our afterward-dinner coffee.

Although that tiny tin of allspice has been empty for years, I've kept it solely for the recipe printed on the back. I accept made this spice cake many times over the years, and have finally decided I demand to put this recipe to newspaper (and the worldwide spider web) and so that it is non lost forever if someone comes along and throws the empty tin away.

This McCormick recipe is tried, true and tested, surely by McCormick earlier they printed it on their spice tins, but as well by me—many times! The spice amounts are just correct. They add enough of season to the block, all the same are in amounts frail enough to allow the buttery taste of a yellowish cake mix, as well as buttery frosting, to polish through. This cake and its mixture of spices are even improve when topped with cream cheese frosting, brown sugar frosting, caramel frosting or a elementary vanilla buttercream frosting, with cream cheese existence my personal favorite. At the bottom of this article is a recipe for basic cream cheese frosting—yous'll discover it quick, easy and delicious.

The frosting is the icing on the cake! — The frosting is the icing on the block!

Photo ©SmartAndFun

Ingredients

1 boxed block mix, yellow, white or vanilla
1/2 teaspoon allspice, (see below for substitute)
one/iv teaspoon cinnamon
ane/viii teaspoon nutmeg
water, every bit directed on block mix box
eggs, every bit directed on cake mix box
oil, as directed on cake mix box

A perfect blend of flavors in each slice.

Photo ©SmartAndFun

Instructions

Set your oven to 350°F so that information technology tin can preheat while you mix up your cake concoction. If you're using nonstick, dark-colored or glass pans, preheat the oven to 325°F.
Ready baking pan or pans by spraying the within bottoms and sides with cooking spray or Baker's Joy, which is a cooking oil spray that besides contains flour.
Dump the dry out cake mix into a big mixing bowl.
Add the allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the block mix. Alloy the dry ingredients if you like, merely at that place's no need to, equally the mixer does a peachy chore of this once you add together the wet ingredients.
Follow the instructions on the cake mix box regarding wet ingredients, which are typically water, oil and eggs. While making the block pictured, I used a Betty Crocker Super Moist yellow cake mix, which called for i cup of water, 1/2 cup of oil, and three eggs. Add wet ingredients into the mixing bowl with the dry out ingredients.
Use an electric mixer to mix together the wet and dry out ingredients. Follow the instructions on the cake mix box regarding mixing speed and mixing time. The Betty Crocker Super Moist cake mix I used instructed me to mix the ingredients on medium speed for 2 minutes.
Cascade into prepared blistering pan or pans.
Broil, again as instructed on the cake mix box. I made two 9-inch layers, which I baked for 24 minutes at 325°F, because I used grayness nonstick pans rather than light-colored steel or aluminum pans.
If baking layers, let them to cool about 15 minutes, then turn the layers onto cooling racks to absurd completely. If baking layers, exercise not allow them to completely cool in the pans, or they may stick and become difficult to remove. Many cooks prefer to get out a 13x9 block in its pan for serving and storing—and this is perfectly fine; there's no need to remove a 13x9 cake from its pan, unless you want to frost the sides and present it on a block platter rather than in the baking pan. No matter what size or type of cake y'all made, make sure information technology cools completely before frosting. Even a slightly warm cake will crusade the frosting to melt and slide off.

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No Allspice? No Trouble!

Allspice is made by grinding dried allspice berries from the Pimenta Dioica plant, which is ofttimes grown in Jamaica, among other tropical locations. Before existence footing into powder, the dried berries resemble dried peppercorns, which is why allspice is sometimes called "Jamaica pepper." Allspice has a warm, slightly peppery season which is like to a alloy of cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg—the typical spices that go into pumpkin pie, cinnamon bread or similar dishes.

If y'all don't take allspice on hand, you tin make a spice cake using the above directions by substituting ground cloves in identify of the allspice, and adjusting the amounts of cinnamon and nutmeg just a scrap. Instead of the spices as indicated above, use these spices and amounts: