Here's The Winning Ticket To Mouthwatering Boxed Cake

There are about half a zillion ways to doctor up boxed cake mix to make it taste even better (not that it's so terrible all on its own). Our favorite boxed cake mix hacks include adding an extra egg for a richer texture, making it fluffier by swapping the water for seltzer or soda, or waking up the flavor with a splash of maple syrup. Another trick we like to keep in our back pocket, however, could be a real life saver (or grocery saver) in case your power gets knocked out by a storm: Combining boxed cake mix with melted ice cream.

Even if you're not dealing with anything as drastic as a power outage, it can be a real bummer to find that your trip home from the grocery store lasted long enough to melt the ice cream you just bought. It could also be that the ice cream didn't melt, but you simply got sick of the flavor before you'd finished an entire carton. Using that boring old ice cream to flavor a cake, however, will give it new life as it transforms into a completely different dessert. The basic recipe is actually quite simple, too, since the ice cream takes the place of the milk and oil that you would otherwise need to add to the cake mix.

First, make sure the ice cream is melted to a liquid state before you measure it. You'll need a couple of cups in all, which may or may not equate to a pint carton. Sure, a pint is 16 ounces and a cup is 8 ounces, but different types of ice cream contain varying levels of air and could thus result in different volumes as they melt. While either a good brand of vanilla ice cream or your favorite flavor can work equally well depending on the type of cake, it's worth noting that if your ice cream has add-ins like chocolate chips or nuts, these, too, might subtract from the liquid volume. By all means, keep them in your cake, but if they're large and chunky, you may want to strain them out before measuring the melted ice cream, and then stir them back into the batter.

Once you have your two cups of melted ice cream, mix them with the boxed cake mix, then stir three eggs into the batter. Pour it into a prepared pan or pans, then bake the cake as per the directions on the back of the box.

The fun part about making this cake is mixing and matching the cake and ice cream to come up with exciting flavor combos. Yellow cake mix would be perfect with anything from butter pecan to dulce de leche to cheesecake, while chocolate cake would go well with coffee, mint chocolate chip, or pistachio. You could also make a summery strawberry lemonade cake from lemon cake mix and strawberry ice cream. In fact, whatever you have on hand in your pantry and freezer will likely turn out fine. After all, cake and ice cream is a classic combo no matter how you slice it.