Pamela's cake mixes

I first tried Pamela's Products again, looking for a good brownie mix, for brownies for a Halloween party my brother's company was holding. They do a competitive Halloween costume contest, office decorating contest, and scary food competition every year. Every year he "we" enter each category, I always bake for him on the food competition so that's "my" award when we place in the top 3 :).

When I was first diagnosed with Celiac I told my brother that to keep getting baked goods for his parties, he'd have to be ok with gluten free options. At the time he sighed and said we could work on it. I tried really hard at finding good recipes and mixes that tasted pretty similar to non-gf options on the market. Pamela's won him over so it was no longer "Can you make me a tray of brownies?" it was now "Can you make a tray of Pamela's brownies?" These were our Halloween brownies that year. With the help of Wilton's candy melts and sprinkles we were able to make some scary skeletons in dirt. :) Everyone loved them, and no one believed they were gluten free.

For my Godmother's birthday I was on the hook for a cake, cupcakes, something sweet for after dinner this past year. I have made my family famous rum cake previously but we thought we'd change it up some. So I made a modified Strawberry shortcake. I got the Pamela's white cake mix, and baked it in two 8 inch round pans following the instructions on the back. (There is instructions for cooking 2 - 8 inch pans.) Once the cake had cooled I layered whipped cream frosting and strawberries on the inside, frosted the outside and decorated the top. The only issue we ran into was trying to make sure the cake safely made it to the party, since it was larger than my cake carrier!!

We all felt the cake came out a bit dry. I had only used a half recipe on the whipped cream frosting, but felt I could have used more, to help add some moisture to the over all cake. It tasted good overall, but it was dry.

So for my brother's birthday (I did a lot of baking for his birthday, cookies, cupcakes, cake, I felt like I was on an episode of cupcake wars!) I decided to try this again, with the chocolate cake mix, add in some banana's and use cream cheese frosting from Duncan Heins, because I was too lazy to make my own frosting. I also got a bit more adventurous and added in some bananas, and cherries as well as strawberries. I could have used the cake for weight lifting it was so heavy!!

The left is Strawberry / Banana, and the right, Cherry / Banana.

Ok - So my decorating on this one is rather lacking, I was not in a creative mood once I got done baking for the day. I did one thing differently with this cake, on the back of the package said to add an extra egg for a fluffier cake. The cake was fluffier, and didn't taste as dry. I put the left over cake in the fridge, and had it for a snack the next day. It was even better the next day. It was soft, moist and very flavorful. The sides of the mixes have some extra options for how to make the cakes, so you can tweak the actual mix to make a few extra options.

I want to try the white cake mix again, see if the extra egg helps, make it less dry. Though we will Not be adding strawberries to Any more cakes, since my dad had an allergic reaction to my brother's birthday cake!! He told me later that when he was younger he use to react to strawberries, and it had been years since his last reaction, but the cake was delicious. Thankfully since I'm allergic to so many odd things we always have Benadryl and cortisone cream on hand, we were able to tackle is reaction pretty quickly.



Pamela's Products also make some great pre-made items, I've reviewed them on my cookie page as well. Overall they create a great product that's high quality at tasty.