For as long as I can remember, my mom would make amazing trifles with angel food cake, custard and chocolate. The dessert always looked impressive, but my mom had a secret to this deceptively elegant dessert: The cake was an angel food cake mix from a box. Now, when I want to recreate a tasty trifle of my own and don’t have a lot of time, I turn to a mix, too.
Which brand of angel food cake mix gives that just like homemade flavor and texture? Our Test Kitchen baked up five brands to help a crew of testers and myself find out:
Honorable Mention: Betty Crocker
Score: 8/10
This pantry staple brand did well in our test. Betty Crocker angel food cake was perfectly airy and light. It sprung back to the touch. The only drawback for this cake was that it didn’t have a ton of sweetness or flavor. If you plan on serving up this cake with fruit and berries, you’ll be just fine.
Runner-Up: Duncan Hines
Score: 8.5/10
Just ahead of Betty Crocker was Duncan Hines’ angel food cake mix. This angel food cake was lauded for its subtle vanilla flavor with a hint of sweetness. The cake itself had a phenomenal lift and was just downright satisfying. A few testers found this cake to be a bit too moist and sticky for angel food cake, but this cake was universally appreciated otherwise.
Best in Show: Baker’s Corner
Score: 9/10
Our favorite angel food cake mix was Baker’s Corner—an Aldi exclusive. When it comes to sweets, Aldi really does well in our tests. Just check out the results for the best peanut butter cups, chocolate frosting, chocolate chips and cake mix.
We loved this cake because it checked all our boxes. The cake was exceptionally light and fluffy like any good angel food cake should be. The cake itself was sweet and moist—a must for any cake. And, while this isn’t flavor-related, testers liked how this cake just looked a bit on the homemade side. If you were in a pinch, you could pass this off as a from-scratch cake. For us testers, that’s the hallmark of any good boxed mix.
The Takeaways
This test proved to us that a good boxed mix is a great stand-in for the real deal. Served up with strawberries and some whipped cream, they would make for a great casual dessert.
While we had our favorites, though, it’s worth pointing out that no cake mix brand scored that low in this test. So if you’re at the store and you can’t find one of our preferred brands, don’t worry. Any of the brands we tried would work well in these desserts that use angel food cake as a base.
Best Angel Food Cake
Glazed Chocolate Angel Food Cake
Toffee Angel Food Cake
Orange Dream Angel Food Cake
Mocha-Hazelnut Glazed Angel Food Cake
Lemon Curd-Filled Angel Food Cake
Heavenly Angel Food Cake
Vanilla Bean Angel Food Cake
Chocolate-Filled Angel Food Cake
Contest-Winning Brown Sugar Angel Food Cake
Angel Food Cake
Chocolate Angel Food Cake with Chocolate Icing
Easy Angel Food Cake
Sherbet-Filled Angel Food Cake
Gluten-Free Angel Food Cake
