Jamie Lee Curtis' Favorite Lemon Cake Starts With A Box Of Jell-O

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Jamie Lee Curtis is a certified scream queen and sovereign of the silver screen. After starring in the iconic 1978 slasher "Halloween," she has since gone on to conquer nearly every film genre, from thrillers to romance and even comedy. She even has an Academy Award to her name to prove her acting bona fides. But what about her cooking credentials? During an appearance on the Today Show, Curtis revealed that she "..kill[s] it in the kitchen." That's a pretty bold statement, but Curtis came prepared to test her mettle by sharing her favorite, and incredibly easy, lemon cake recipe.

For her segment on the morning program, Curtis joined host Savannah Guthrie in the studio's kitchen to give a rundown on this box cake hack she uses to make a simple but impressive dessert. According to Curtis, the recipe comes from Anne Byrne's 1998 book "The Cake Mix Doctor," and the key to Curtis' favorite lemon cake is lemon Jell-O. To make the cake, she simply uses one box of yellow cake mix and combines it with oil and warm (or hot) water, then stirs in one box of lemon Jell-O mix before adding eggs. Adding Jell-O to the cake mix with warm water helps to bloom the gelatin in the mix, which makes the cake perfectly dense and moist. She then adds lemon zest to the batter for even more lemon flavor before baking it into a bundt cake, her preferred cake shape for this recipe.

The key to Jamie Lee Curtis' lemon cake is the Jell-O, but this isn't the only trick to her lemon cake. For the glaze, she combines confectioners' sugar with lemon juice (from your zesting lemon if you're feeling economical) and pours it into a squeeze tube. If this is too much lemon, you can just use confectioners' sugar and water (flavor it with vanilla extract or almond extract if you want a sweet twist to balance out the citrus). Once the cake is done cooling (she intentionally underbakes it a bit for added moisture), she uses the squeeze tube to create a nice icing design on the cake, even pooling some icing in the center of the bundt to add yet more moisture.

Curtis' cake hack doesn't just stop with lemon cake; the beauty of this recipe is its customizability. Since you're using yellow cake mix as your base, you can add whatever Jell-O flavor you please — strawberry, lime, and orange work particularly well. Each of these flavors can be further bolstered by the addition of other ingredients. If you use orange Jell-O, for example, you can use orange juice for the icing and zest for the batter. If you use strawberry Jell-O, you might want to combine freeze-dried strawberry powder with powdered sugar for an extra-fruity punch in your icing.

Thanks to its gelatin and flavoring components, Jell-O makes a great addition to cake mix. In fact, it's one of many things you can use to perk up your boxed cake. But what about Jell-O's baking aisle counterpart, instant pudding mix? 

Similar to Jell-O, instant pudding mix helps add moisture and density to cake mixes. However, unlike Jell-O, which contains gelatin, instant pudding uses cornstarch to achieve its jiggly, soft texture. This cornstarch absorbs moisture efficiently, allowing for a softer bake. The moistening power of pudding mix is so well-proven that some boxed cake mixes even come with pudding mix already included.

In addition to improving a cake's texture, pudding mix can also add flavor. You can, of course, add vanilla pudding mix to a yellow cake base, or chocolate pudding mix to chocolate cake, but you can also mix in flavors such as pistachio, banana, or even lemon pudding to a yellow cake base for an unexpected flavor infusion. Seriously, try out a few flavors and see just how delicious and simple this hack is.