Have you ever taken a bite of cake and felt like it just melted in your mouth? Tasting the perfect cake may send you on a quest to recreate it at home, but making a perfectly moist, airy cake requires a little bit of skill and a lot of patience. Whether you’re making a cake from scratch or a mix, you want the end result to be light, fluffy, and moist with an even, delicate crumb structure. And as most home bakers know, the littlest things can lead to a ruined cake: inconsistent oven temperature, over-mixing, over-baking, using the wrong ingredient ratio, or making poor substitutions for listed ingredients. If you keep ending up with cakes that are dense, heavy, oily, or dry, it may be due to one of those far too easy to make baking mistakes. Luckily, we have found a solution for dry cakes, and it works with the best box cake mixes as well as cakes made from scratch: Add mayonnaise.
Bakers have been adding mayonnaise to desserts for almost 100 years. The first known cake recipe that included mayonnaise appeared in the Oakland Tribune on March 7, 1927. This clever ingredient substitution became popular during the Great Depression and later World War II, when many common grocery items were unavailable, hard to come by, or prohibitively expensive. People got creative when finding substitutes for ingredients like dairy and eggs. Because mayonnaise contains oil and eggs, it was the perfect way to add moisture to baked goods and enhance their flavor and texture. In 1937, General Foods, the company that owned Best Foods and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, published a recipe for chocolate mayonnaise cake in a recipe book and on the backs of mayonnaise jars.
Why you should add mayonnaise to your cake
Mayonnaise contains fat and moisture, both of which will result in a more flavorful and moist cake. Plus, the vinegar in mayonnaise will create a chemical reaction with the baking soda in your cake recipe or mix, keeping your cake light and airy. As long as you use plain rather than flavored mayonnaise, you don’t need to worry that your secret ingredient will negatively impact the way your cake tastes. And because of the relatively neutral flavor of mayonnaise, it can be added to almost any type of cake, from a rich chocolate Texas cake to a delicate vanilla cake or a classic spice cake.
If you can’t get past the idea of using mayonnaise, there are other ways to elevate your boxed cake mix and keep your cake from drying out. Try using silken tofu to make an extra moist cake, using sour cream or yogurt for coffee cake, or adding cottage cheese to your carrot cake recipe. You can even take a tip from Chef Keiry Palma and use Instant ClearJel to enhance your cake’s moisture content and structure. And if the price of eggs is keeping you from cake baking, some of the best egg substitutes for a boxed cake mix include yogurt, applesauce, and mashed banana, which will also add a lot of moisture.
