Boxed Cake Mix - Tricks

A lot of times, I want to bake, but don't have the time to make cupcakes from scratch. To make it taste more "homemade", I sometimes do the following:

1. Use coconut water instead of water in boxed yellow cake mix. This gives it a hint of coconut. You can also do this with chocolate cake mix. If you add some graham cracker crumbs and coconut flakes to the icing, it can taste like Samoas.

2. Add fresh strawberries to strawberry cake mix.

3. Add Andes Baking Mint pieces (this is only available around Christmas, so I stock up!) to chocolate cake mik. This goes well with brownie mix, and even coookie dough. People tend to have a love/hate relationship with mint chocolate, but I know our family loves it.

4. You can use orange juice instead of water to white cake mix.

5. Add fresh lemon rind to white cake mix so it's a bit lemon flavored.

This is really easy to do, and pretty self explanatory. You can use almsot anything! I think boxed cake mix is great, but this is just small things you can do so people don't necessarily realize you are using boxed mix, and it makes it a little bit more unique.