Pillsbury Discontinued The Key Ingredient For This Beloved '60s Cake — But There's A Fix

Old-school recipes can be kind of a mixed bag. We come back to some vintage recipes time and time again (like icebox cake), while others — like a 1953 recipe for a chili-and-gelatin dish — are happily left in the cookbooks of yesteryear. If you're partial to something sweet and chocolatey, there's one that's an age-old favorite: Pillsbury's Tunnel of Fudge cake, which first gained notoriety in 1966 when it won second place in the iconic Pillsbury Bake-Off contest. Submitted by Ella Helfrich of Houston, Texas, this cake gained fans fast, judging by comments on the brand's modern recipe of people fondly remembering eating it in their childhood. 

The chocolate cake is baked in a bundt pan, and as it cooks, it develops a thick, fudgy center. Some say it tastes similar to a super-rich brownie. There's one problem, however. The original recipe for the cake called for Pillsbury's boxed powder icing mix, which the company discontinued in the '80s. Today, Pillsbury's recipe replaces the missing boxed icing mix with powdered sugar and unsweetened cocoa powder. Walnuts are also crucial to the recipe, as they help the fudgy center set (otherwise, you might be left with something more like a lava cake, which isn't what you want for a cake you're not going to eat all at once). However, some say that the recipe is still missing a little something without the boxed icing mix.

While this elder millennial isn't quite old enough to have had the joy of tasting the original Tunnel of Fudge cake recipe, I decided to give Pillsbury's updated version a go (to be honest, my 8-year-old saw a picture of the cake in my research and asked if we could please, please make it). The cake comes together pretty simply, but it's a serious time investment. Between mixing the ingredients and the two-phase cooling time, it took us about five hours from start to finish. It was fairly simple to make, but I was a little shocked at the amount of butter (nearly 2 cups) and eggs (half a dozen) that the recipe required.

We wanted to love this cake — we really did. It just wasn't quite what we had hoped for, unfortunately. The fudgy center bordered on runny, but to be fair, it was a super-hot day, so perhaps the cake needed more cooking time, or maybe we should have popped it into the fridge for a bit before slicing into it. The areas where the walnuts were touching the cake pan were fantastic, so perhaps it would be helpful to toast the walnuts before adding them to the batter (our recipe calls for toasted pecans, which makes this a non-issue). All in all, it wasn't awful, but it didn't earn a spot on our make-again list. (Note that we also have our own version of the old-fashioned Tunnel of Fudge cake recipe that's a little bit different, and you might want to give it a try if you also don't love Pillsbury's.)

Whether you go with Pillsbury's version or you try ours there are a few things you'll want to keep in mind. As we mentioned, walnuts are not optional. While you can take or leave nuts in most baking recipes, this isn't the case here. Pillsbury's Tunnel of Fudge cake recipe calls for 2 cups, so be sure to pick up one of the larger packs of chopped walnuts at the store. Another non-negotiable is cooling time. If you're like us, you might be tempted to take the cake out of the pan early, but that's a no-go for this recipe. 

One final tip: Seriously grease and flour your cake pan before you add batter — you can also use cocoa powder, as suggested by our recipe. We used avocado oil spray (oil is typically the winner in the great butter vs. oil pan greasing debate), but despite our best efforts, we still had some of the center of the cake stick to the middle of the bundt pan. While we greased and floured thoroughly, we must have missed a few spots on that tricky raised center area, which might have contributed to our messier-than-expected end result. 

We're not exactly sure how different our outcome would have been if we were able to get our hands on the boxed frosting the original recipe called for. However, we're hoping we can eventually give it a try — tons of Tunnel of Fudge cake fans are begging Pillsbury to put the good stuff back on store shelves.