A HARTE APPETITE: TRUE CONFESSIONS: EVEN THE BEST COOK CAN USE A CAKE MIX WITHOUT SHAME

I have a confession to make. For years I have been making a chocolate cake that everybody raves over. Once I took it to a committee meeting and one of the committee members said it was absolutely the best chocolate cake he had ever tasted. Another time I took it to a party and people actually fought over the last slice. Without fail, whenever I serve it, somebody asks for the recipe. Well, the cake does contain some flavorful ingredients -- Kahlua, sour cream, and almost a pound of chocolate. But, and here's the confession, it begins with a mix.

I'm prompted to let this skeleton out of my oven by the recent publication of Anne Byrn's book, "The Cake Mix Doctor," which suggests that I should no longer be ashamed of myself. Apparently I'm not the only one parlaying a cake mix into something special. When Byrn asked readers of the Nashville Tennessean for ideas for doctoring cake mixes, she received 500 recipes within just one week.

I've always had a disdainful -- OK, snobbish -- attitude toward cake mixes. I steadfastly maintained that no mix can rival what you get when you bake from scratch. That's because I've eaten my share of box cakes that didn't need a doctor, they needed a priest! But Byrn has me questioning my assumptions. I'm now convinced that proper embellishment can make a cake mix taste as good as homemade.

Partly this is because cake mixes have come a long way since their introduction a little over 50 years ago. Actually, the origin of the cake mix can be traced back further than that, to 1842 and the invention of self-rising flour. Other precursors include corn muffin mix, developed in 1920, and gingerbread mix, created in 1929.

Cake mixes, outgrowths of baking mixes used to feed troops in World War II, were introduced by General Mills and Pillsbury in 1949. Initially they did not catch on despite the fact that postwar America seemed a ripe market for them. Consumer research revealed that they induced guilt in housewives who, having to add nothing more than water, did not feel they were living up to expectations and really baking. But when Nebraska's Consolidated Mills introduced its Duncan Hines brand three years later it captured almost 50 percent of the market within three weeks and after six months sold six times what had been projected for the entire year. The mix, devised by company chemist Arlee Andre, required consumers to add their own eggs and that, apparently, made all the difference. In fact, called the Three Star Special, it could be the basis of a white, yellow or devil's food cake depending on whether the baker added egg whites, whole eggs or cocoa powder. So jazzing up a packaged cake mix with additional ingredients is not altogether new.

Over the years, manufacturers have tirelessly experimented with cake mixes. For example, Byrn tells the story of a senior home economist at Pillsbury who drove 3,000 miles around Montana with a load of cake mix in her car to determine first hand how the product would hold up during shipping. In 1977, after noticing how many winners of its Bake-Off relied on pudding mix to enhance their entries, Pillsbury reformulated its product and put the pudding in to begin with. General Mills followed suit.

Because of such improvements cake mixes are now used by more than 60 percent of American households and, as Bryn notes, they have some real advantages over homemade. For instance, they're much more forgiving. Overbeat the batter and they still bake up fine. Underbeat it and the result is nonetheless perfectly acceptable. Take a box cake out of the oven sooner than you should and all will be well. Plus, cake mixes contain emulsifiers that prevent fat and liquid from separating, guaranteeing a moist cake. In a scratch cake the only emulsifier is egg yolk. Moreover, at home you have only baking powder or baking soda at your disposal, whereas cake mix manufacturers employ other leavening agents that insure a high rising cake even if you don't follow the directions precisely. And because eggs are not a source of leavening in a cake mix, you don't need to take the time to let them come to room temperature as you should when baking from scratch. You can even prepare cake mix batter, refrigerate it and bake it later. Finally, all you need is a simple handheld mixer. In fact, a sturdy commercial style mixer would be overkill. No wonder a once popular tearoom in Cape Girardeau noted for elegant and delicious layer cakes relied heavily on mixes.

You can capitalize on these strengths while using judicious additions that give the cake a homemade quality and even a former purist like myself may never guess your secret. For example, for chocolate mixes Byrn recommends adding a few tablespoons of cocoa powder and some instant coffee and substituting buttermilk for the water. For white mixes she advises using melted butter instead of oil and whole eggs instead of just the whites called for in the package directions. From there let your imagination run wild. There's hardly a limit to the things you can add to a cake mix to deliciously camouflage its ancestry. Extras such as chocolate chips, fruit, liqueurs, cream cheese, lemon curd, grated zucchini, Jell-O and even Coca-Cola can help you turn a cake mix into a signature dessert.

But though these days you can make a credible cake from a box, Byrn insists you follow a rule handed down from her mother: "You can get away with baking a cake from a mix, but you absolutely must make homemade frosting."

Melted Ice Cream Cake

This recipe adapted from Byrn's book cleverly uses melted ice cream to both enrich and flavor cake mix, and the possibilities are endless. Make sure you measure the ice cream after melting because it will contain some air. You can gild the lily by serving this cake with a scoop of the ice cream that was added to it.

Ingredients:

1 package white cake mix without pudding

2 cups melted ice cream

3 eggs

Directions:

Blend together the cake mix, melted ice cream and eggs on low speed of electric mixer for 1 minute. Scrape down sides of bowl and beat at medium speed for 2 minutes longer until batter is thick and well blended. Pour batter into a greased Bundt pan and bake at 350 degrees until cake springs back lightly when pressed, about 40 minutes. Cool cake 20 minutes before removing from pan. Dust with powdered sugar or frost with the glaze of your choice.

Listen to A Harte Appetite Friday mornings and Saturday afternoons on KRCU, 90.9 on your FM dial. Write A Harte Appetite, c/o the Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63702-0699 or by e-mail to tharte@semovm.semo.edu.

Tom Harte is a professor at Southeast Missouri State University and writes a food column every other week for the Southeast Missourian.