The Water Swap That Makes Box Mix Cakes Extra Fluffy
People have historically turned to boxed cake mixes for a nice, baked snack that can be enjoyed for minimum effort. Simply pour the mix into a bowl, then whisk it together with water (sometimes with a few extra eggs and tablespoons of cooking oil), then bake the finished batter and you have a nice one ready to go in minutes. While it's super convenient, you can't quite control the proportion of the ingredients in box mix cakes as you do with a cake batter that you whip up on your own from scratch. So, lots of times, they'll come out of the oven with a few undesirable traits, like being too dry and crumbly, or too stiff.
Each dilemma, of course, has fixes that you can use. The fix for stiff, not-so-fluffy cake, though, is pretty intriguing. Instead of whisking the mix together with flat water like the instructions on the box most likely say, swap it with sparkling water or seltzer!
Carbonated water can fluff up your cakes
Behind every fluffy cake and pastry are heaps of air bubbles — literally! If you cut into a slice of cake, you'll find the spongy interior to be filled with lots of tiny air bubbles and chambers. These bubbles form from the air that manages to slip into the batter while it's being whisked. Then, as the cake rises in the oven and the batter expands, these bubbles grow and form micro-structures within the cake, giving it that soft, airy feel that everyone craves.
In general, the more bubbles there are within the cake and the larger they are, the fluffier it will taste. By incorporating a carbonated drink, such as sparkling water or seltzer (for a hint of flavor), you can promote the formation of additional air bubbles. This happens thanks to the beverage's carbonation, which is essentially a bunch of gases dissolved within the drink. The end result? A remarkably fluffier cake than you'd typically get!
What kind of carbonated drink is best for cakes?
Technically, you can use any carbonated drink as a swap for water in your box mix cake batter. However, the safest bet is sparkling water, which won't affect the taste of the cake or contend with the flavor of any filling, syrup, or topping you want to put on top of the cake.
But if you're making something flavored, say, a vanilla loaf cake, you can try mixing it with a flavored seltzer, such as vanilla cream. The extra flavor will amp up the taste of the cake and make the flavor far more complex than just a few drops of vanilla extract.
Feeling adventurous? You can even experiment with sodas (yes, the Mountain Dew and Coke kinds,) in your batter. The carbonation within them will fluff up the cake, but the flavoring is where it gets a bit more complicated. You'll have to do some experiments to know which soda suits which kind of cake batter. Fortunately, there are popular recipes out there, like Coke plus death by chocolate cake, or zesty Mountain Dew for lemon-glazed pound cake. The flavorings, as you can see, are paired with the dominant flavor of the cake mix so that they blend seamlessly. Aim for similarly well-matched combos when you test out your favorite soda with your box cake mix.