Here’s a bit of a culinary brain bender for you: Condensed milk is a key component in dulce de leche, but dulce de leche makes a better upgrade for cakes than sweetened condensed milk. Did you follow that? If not, it’s OK, because Marissa Stevens, recipe developer and food blogger at Pinch and Swirl, has extensive knowledge on the matter and shared details with Food Republic.
While sweetened condensed milk makes an excellent canned upgrade for boxed cake mix – helping it taste sweeter, richer, and more homemade — dulce de leche is even mightier at elevating the dessert to new flavor and texture heights. “Dulce de leche adds a deeper, more developed flavor than sweetened condensed milk,” Stevens explained. “It has caramel and toffee notes, and a slightly salty edge that makes everything taste more balanced. It also gives boxed cake extra moisture and a denser, more satisfying texture without making it feel heavy.”
Bakers aren’t typically quick to brag about using a boxed mix to churn out a dessert. However, a can of this Latin American sauce effectively obscures the pre-packaged qualities of a cake mix, hiding the shortcut with its impeccable taste. “It’s one of those additions that makes the cake taste like you spent a lot more time on it than you actually did,” Stevens detailed.
Incorporating dulce de leche into your boxed cake mix
So, what is the best way to add this delicious ingredient to your boxed cake recipe? While dulce de leche can be mixed directly into the cake batter before baking, Marissa Stevens doesn’t advise this method. “I don’t usually fold it fully into the batter, since there’s always the risk of weighing the cake down,” she explained. Instead, the expert takes a careful swirl approach when adding the ingredient to an uncooked cake mixture. “It creates pockets of caramel flavor and looks great when sliced. It also works well as a filling between layers or stirred into buttercream,” Stevens detailed.
You can also take a poke cake approach by piercing your baked cake evenly with holes, drizzling heated dulce de leche into the perforations, and letting it seep into the dessert for added moisture and flavor. It can even be added to frosting by combining the caramel-like sauce with cream cheese, then incorporating whipping cream with your mixer (or by hand if you are up for the workout).
Many boxed cake mix flavors stand to benefit from this ingredient upgrade, but Stevens advised that dulce de leche “is especially good with spice cakes, banana cakes, or yellow cake with a little salt in the batter to keep the sweetness in check.” Starting with a quality foundation and identifying the best boxed cake mixes before choosing one will make your efforts that much more successful.
