Trader Joe's new Cake and Frosting Mixes
Whew! After making 100 cupcakes this week and a batch of cinnamon crumb cake, I feel qualified to review the new Trader Joe's cake mixes. These three cake mixes, along with a chocolate frosting mix, have hit the shelves recently complete with adorable retro packaging. Not only are they pretty convenient, but they're excellent cake mixes. Yesterday when I served a batch of the cupcakes to a group of 2nd graders, I watched as they finished the cupcakes and then practically ate the cupcake wrappers (I'm glad I use unbleached all-natural wrappers!) Three 2nd-graders approached me afterwards asking if they could please have the "recipe" for the cupcakes. I smiled and said it was a cake mix and could they guess where I bought it (wink). "Trader Joe's!" they yelled, jumping up and down.
Well, if it gets the unanimous approval of 2nd graders, you know it has to be good. The Chocolate Cake Mix is dark, rich, and moist.
The 
batter mixes up smooth and silky and bakes up with an intoxicating aroma. While I was baking the cupcakes, I stepped into my front yard for just a minute and a neighbor stopped to ask me what I was making, saying it smelled heavenly. The Golden Yellow Cake Mix is equally delicious and moist.I frosted the cupcakes with two kinds of frosting. I used the Trader Joe's Chocolate Frosting Mix for the chocolate cupcakes and made my own lemon buttercream frosting for the yellow cupcakes. You may be thinking, "Hey, isn't frosting mix just powdered sugar and cocoa? Is it a waste of money to buy this box?" It's true that buttercream frosting is basically powdered sugar and the butter you add. And yes, the chocolate frosting mix is primarily powdered sugar and cocoa. Ho
wever, at $2.69 for a 12 oz box of mix, the price is equivalent to buying powdered sugar ($2.79 for a 16 oz bag at Trader Joe's). If you don't stock powdered sugar and cocoa in your pantry, or you simply want to skip the measuring, I think the frosting mix is a perfectly fine thing to buy. The ingredients were great quality and the frosting was smooth and delicious. Make sure that when you're mixing up the frosting, you add the hot water very slowly. If you have not made this kind of frosting before, you will be tempted to add a lot of hot water to the large amount of powdered sugar, but believe me that it takes very little. Go slowly, mix thoroughly, and stop when the frosting is smooth and spreadable. For other frosting options, you can use a whipped cream frosting like the one we use in our Star Spangled Berry Cake. It's flavored with vanilla and just a touch of sugar. If you like, substitute 1/4 cup of maple syrup for the vanilla and sugar - it's a really nice fall flavor on cakes and cupcakes. For an all-natural dye-free cake/cupcake decoration, I love to use berries, chocolate sprinkles, or Trader Joe's Chocolate Covered Sunflower Seed Drops. And for some seasonal decorating ideas, here are our Halloween cupcakes !
The Cinnamon Crumb Cake is also delicious and would be a nice and sweet add-on for a brunch. When you mix the batter up for this one, two things will happen. You will think
, "this doesn't seem like very much batter" and then you will think, "this seems too thick...did I mix it up right?" The batter will be thick like brownie batter. Just spread it in the bottom of your pan (I used an 8-inch oval dish) - it will bake up great. The smell of this one is amaaaaazing while it bakes.When you open the package, there will be two bags of mix inside. One is the cake mix, and one is the crumb mix. They are labeled, but it's not easy to see. The slightly larger bag is the cake mix.
These mixes are more or less foolproof, but here are some hints when baking cakes or cupcakes:
1) Preheat your oven and make sure it has reached the indicated temperature. If you try to get a "head start" by putting your item in the oven while it's preheating, your baked goods won't bake evenly, the texture may be affected, and final cooking times will be off.
2) Don't skimp (or skip) when greasing and flouring pans. Nothing is more frustrating than baking a cake and not being able to pop it out of the pan. Get the butter or oil into all the corners and edges, then flour the pan if indicated. Are you baking a chocolate cake? Then use unsweetened cocoa powder instead of flour, otherwise your baked cake will have a haze of white all over it...not attractive.
3) For birthday parties, consider cupcakes instead of a cake. They're easier and faster to serve and the pieces are all the same. And no plates or forks are necessary! There's no cutting, no panicked plating, and no complaints over the size of piece or getting a corner piece vs. a center piece. I like to use baking cups (cupcake wrappers) - they're available in a variety of designs as well as plain, unbleached ones.
4) Take it easy when mixing batters. Mix gently only until combined. Enthusiastic over-beating with gluten-containing flours will create gluey, chewy, and tough baked goods.
5) Don't peek! You're in a hurry but if you constantly open the oven door to see how far along your cake is, you're going to disrupt the heat circulation and your baking will fall flat or cook unevenly.
And in closing, an annoucement:
Did you hear the news!?!? Our newest cookbook, "Cooking with Trader Joe's: Dinner's Done!" is about to be released! We're so excited and hope you love it too. It's hardcover, full of great new recipes, with color photos and nutritional information for every recipe.
Posted by Deana Gunn at October 7, 2010 
Categories: Product Reviews, Vegetarian and Vegan , Favorite Products, Food Recipes
Tags: frosting chocolate cake golen cake cake mix birthday cupcakes
Categories: Product Reviews, Vegetarian and Vegan , Favorite Products, Food Recipes
Tags: frosting chocolate cake golen cake cake mix birthday cupcakes
thanks for the review! I saw these mixes last night and wondered how they were! I bought the cinnamon crumb, but thought I'd save the other cake mixes for another time.
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I was thrilled to see these items at my TJ's--I'm perfectly capable of making both cakes and frosting from scratch, but sometimes I don't want to. TJ's vanilla cake mix was SO good and homemade-tasting that I'm sure these will be great. I've tried WF's one frosting in a can, and it was just bizarre (it was gluten-free, so probably the best they could do). I have high hopes!
If anyone has suggestions for additions to either the yellow or chocolate mixes, I'm all ears!
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I know our store was a BIG fan of the chocolate cake and frosting. The Yellow Cake Mix had mixed reviews; I know a lot of us (including myself) found it a bit "blah".
The frosting is dark and rich and has intense chocolate flavor.
I know all three of these items will be featured in our Fall Flyer landing next week. Should draw some attention to these new products!
Hopefully we'll have a cool endcap art board up featuring these items soon for you!
www.tjsartisthub.com
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Sounds great. For the yellow cake, I found it to be a nice "backdrop" to a lemon buttercream frosting I made. I made a basic frosting (powdered sugar and butter) but instead of water, I added lemon juice and then the zest of one big lemon. It went nicely together. By itself I can see how it might be a bit blah compared to the intensity of the chocolate cake!
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Deana
I am SO happy to know this. I love cake and when I saw these at TJ's I was excited. Then, one of the cooks there told me they tasted like styrofoam and so I put them back on the shelf. Now, with your suggestions I will make them and KNOW they will be yummy. I did make the coffee cake last week and we liked it tho next time I would use 2/3 of the crumb topping-it was too much, even for me the cake lover
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Yes, I thought they were pretty good! I still smile at the 2nd graders scraping the last molecules of chocolate cake off the cupcake wrappers and asking me for my "recipe"...I'm so used to going to parties and seeing kids often lick the frosting off and throw away the cake that I was impressed!
For the cinnamon crumb cake, I've made it twice now and I prefer to have half of the crumb topping layered in the cake and the other half on top. I totally agree that all of the crumb topping on top is too much. It's very sweet.
The second batch I made went camping with us this weekend. I cut it up into pieces and stashed it in a tupperware container - it was an easy dessert the first night and very popular with the other families that were out there with us - everyone made a mental note to buy a box of the mix when they got back.
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I tried the yellow cake mix. I wanted to love it, but I just couldn't. Texture was great, moistness great, but flavor....
not so great. It tasted like corn bread. Now, I like corn bread all right, but I wanted cake flavor.
I frosted it with the chocolate frosting mix, which is AMAZING. I found myself just eating the frosting and leaving the cake. We ate probably about a fourth of it, trying to love it, and ended up just crumbling it up and tossing it to the birds (who seemed to enjoy it thoroughly).
I'm going to give the chocolate cake mix a try and also the golden vanilla cake mix that comes in the smaller box.
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my whole family thought I was crazy, why did I frost & serve corn muffins! They even smell like corn muffins while they are cooking.
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I, too, thought they tasted EXACTLY like corn bread! Not sweet at all. Blegh! My husband asked me, with a mouth full of his first bite, if it was corn bread. I ended up throwing them out, wishing I had instead put something savory on them and used them at dinner. So unfortunate, and a surprise, seeing that I normally LOVE Trader Joe's items.
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I just made my first batch of yellow cake mix cupcakes and I totally agree they tasted like corn muffins, even the texture was that of a corn muffin.
9/29/12
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OK. I made the yellow cake mix today & added some vanilla to the batter after reading sandra's "cornbread tasting" comment. She was so right - it does taste like cornbread. Which is fine if you want a corn muffin, but a disaster with choc frosting at a cupcake sale. Very disappointing. I wonder if it's a batch issue at the factory?
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Well now I'm just going to have to make the yellow cake again! I made the chocolate one several times but the yellow only once and I frosted it with a very lemony homemade frosting so maybe that masked the "cornbready-ness" of it!
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I never use mixes but needed a baked item fast so decided to try the Crumb Cake mix. I was very pleasantly surprised. I poured half the batter into the greased pyrex pan and then layered in slices of raw apple along with 1/3 of the topping, then poured in the rest of the mix and finished with the rest of the topping. Very good for a mix. Next time I would make 2 boxes in a larger pan as it was a little challenging to split the batter & have enough to cover the pan on both layers. The apples added nice moisture and flavor and I'd definitely add them or another fruit again.
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We LOVED the yellow cake and chocolate frosting. My 6-year old and I made a double layer 9-inch round for my 4-year old's birthday on Saturday. We used canola oil for the cake and mixed everything with the standing mixer.
I usually bake from scratch, but this was so good we may not anymore. At least not the simple basics like this. I liked the flavor, texture, everything! My husband who almost never eats dessert even had seconds!
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I rarely write on sites, but feel compelled to:I had the yellow cake with the choc. frosting..it was wonderful! The cake did NOT taste like a 'box' cake at all! I ususally use cake doctor recipes to improve the box mixes..but not necessary for these!!
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Hi Kathy,
I really like that mix too, but as you can see from the comments here, the reviews on the yellow cake mix were a little mixed. I just added the product to our review page and I'd love to get yours (and everyone else's) reviews there! http://cooktj.com/product/golden-yellow-cake-mix
Have you tried the other new mixes? I thought that the Cinnamon Crumb and the Chocolate Cake mix were both very good!
Deana
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I thought the yellow cake mix cake was horrid. We rarely bake so it was a special occasion for my daughter to make cupcakes. We were very disappointed in the resulting cupcakes. The flavor was off and there was a fish-oil after taste. Very disappointing. Now we have to bake a new batch with a different cake mix.
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Hi Clara,
As you can see from the comments, the reviews on the yellow cake mix are pretty mixed - some people love it and plenty of people hate it! I thought the chocolate mix was fantastic - maybe you can give that one a try!
Best,
Deana
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I am so glad to hear that other people had the "cornbread" experience with the Yellow Cake Mix. I made a ton of these and when the first batch went in the oven I really thought I had accidentally bought cornbread mix. I gave it the benefit of the doubt because it is from Trader Joe's, but I wish I hadn't! I frosted two (the chocolate frosting was to die for) and my husband and I each had one. Not at all cake like and not enough like a muffin to warrant eating them that way! I through away all those cupcakes! Such a disappointment! I will try the chocolate!
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Would love to have your review (and everyone else's) here: http://cooktj.com/product/golden-yellow-cake-mix ...I'm sure other TJ fans would appreciate it.
I hope you like the chocolate cake mix better. I just used it today to make cupcakes for an Easter egg hunt we had. Seemed to go over well!
Deana
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I bought this cake mix from TJ because I wanted to make my daughter a nice yellow cake with chocolate frosting for her 3rd birthday party. As I was mixing the batter I tasted the batter. It didn't taste right. It tasted like an old Betty Crocker pancake mix with a hint of cornmeal. I was hoping it would taste like a yellow cake when it was out of the oven. When the cake came out of the oven I waited 20 minutes and tasted it. It tasted like somewhat like a corn muffin....definitely not at all like a yellow cake.
The next morning after church I went and bought the regular yellow cake mix I usually bake. I love TJs, but I seriously do NOT recommend the yellow cake.
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Thanks for sharing your experience with it! The response from readers has been really mixed on this cake mix - some people love it and some people hate it -- many say that this cake mix tastes and smells way too much like cornbread... I don't mind the cake mix, but I totally agree it smells like cornbread!
If you'd like to add your review here to our product review database http://cooktj.com/product/golden-yellow-cake-mix we welcome it!
Best,
Deana
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I just made the coffee cake this morning. I did it as directed on package (skim milk instead of water and veg oil, not butter), with crumbs in middle in a 9x9 square pan. You are right, seems like a small amount of batter but cooks perfectly (and deliciously). My boyfriend and his friend are finishing it off as they watch Sunday football. LOL.
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I just made the yellow cake for my son's birthday and it DOES TASTE EXACTLY LIKE CORNBREAD! I did a search and came across this site and was happy to find my suspicions confirmed! So I had to run out last night and buy new mixes and make more cakes. I'm going to attempt the frosting today - I hope that is alright.
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too many preservatives and other things i don't want to eat in mixes, even if they taste good
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I'm sooo upset knowing chocolate cake mix will be discontinued? Whyyyy?? I always order a case of it every 2months & is loved by everyone? Why does Trader Joes always discontinue good products??
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I cannot comment on the cake mixes as I have never tried them, however the TJ's Chocolate Frosting Mix was AWESOME !!! Sadly, I haven't seen it on the shelves at TJ's for many months, then when I was there today (10/5/12), I asked the customer service desk employees and was told both the chocolate and vanilla frosting mixes are discontinued! So bummed about this info - the chocolate truly was the best that I have ever tasted.
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