How To Easily Turn Store-Bought Yellow Cake Mix Into Spice Cake

The holiday season seems to be besotted with spice cake. The dessert offers depth to your celebratory dinners. Sweet enough to feel special, but with a muted, fragrant quality that warms you up on a cold winter evening, spice cakes pair perfectly with a rich cup of coffee and a frosted window. The familiar flavors of a spice cake are also reminiscent of the notes of another controversial Christmas dish: the fruit cake. For festive flavor at home, you can easily freestyle your own spice cake with boxed cake mix, and a few pantry staples.

Boxed cake mixes are basically a home baker's blank canvas. It's easy to step up store-bought cake mixes with countless ingredient swaps for layered flavor and intense texture. Bake a spice cake in a pinch, with basic yellow cake mix and spices you probably have on hand. At your next holiday party, wow guests or simply impress your parents with a boxed cake that tastes homemade.

The ingredients in many spice cakes mirror the flavor profile of another familiar holiday heavy hitter: homemade pumpkin spice blend. The mix of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice is perfect for sprinkling into your boxed cake mix. You can make your own or pick up a bottle of the blend at your grocery store for all your seasonal pumpkin spice latte needs. If pumpkin spice is in short supply at your store, but you aren't interested in whisking the components together from scratch, you can also use apple pie spice as a substitute. The bottled blend is very similar, however usually features cardamom, for a nutty smokiness. Usually the cardamom offsets the sweet taste of the cooked apples, but it can also balance any sugary icing you might add to your spice cake.

Typically, yellow cake gets its sunny color from golden egg yolks. The specific ingredients in boxed yellow cake mixes vary from brand to brand, but the flour mixture presents a basic, sturdy base for spiced, seasonal flavor. Following the instructions on the box, simply boost your boxed cake with your spice blend of choice.