Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Yellow Cake Mix

I was suspicious. Really suspicious. How could General Mills make a gluten-free cake mix that was half the price of the other really good GF cake mixes AND tasty? But my husband was so optimistic about it. He and I are sort of meh on the idea of cakes, but shouldn't we have the same options as everyone else?

General Mills has been really good to us. The majority of the Chex line is gluten-free now (as we speak, due to a promotion at our grocery store, we have Chocolate Chex, Cinnamon Chex, Strawberry Chex, Rice Chex, Corn Chex, and Honey Nut Chex in our cupboard) and the boy loves them. He was slow to warm up to Strawberry Chex, but they have definitely grown on him. He likes the Rice and Corn Chex for breakfast and the others for snacks. Cartons of Yoplait yogurts are all marked gluten-free, even flavors that we might have been suspicious of in the past, like strawberry cheesecake.

So we bought a box. The only options in the gluten-free Betty Crocker line at the current time are brownies, chocolate chip cookies, Devil's Food cake, and yellow cake. I feel like I have brownies under control (Bob's Red Mill), chocolate chip cookies (my own special blend of flour), and I wouldn't touch chocolate cake with a ten foot pole, so we went with the yellow cake.

I guess a part of me had forgotten how easy it is to make a cake from a mix. Add mix, eggs, water, and some gluten-free vanilla, mix it for a few minutes in my fancy pants KitchenAid mixer, and then pour the batter into cupcake tins. Seriously, prep (including frosting the things after they had cooled) took about eight minutes. When I'm making cookies, eight minutes is what it takes for me to find all the ingredients I need!!

Yet, I maintained my skepticism during the baking process. The batter was thin and runny and tasted like last week's hummus and the smell coming out of my oven was not encouraging.

However, they baked nicely. I put them in the oven for 20 minutes and they passed the toothpick test with flying colors. I let them cool for a couple of hours (obviously the boy was not home while this was going on or I would have had to frost them IMMEDIATELY). I used Betty Crocker (keeping it in the General Mills family) Rich and Creamy Vanilla.

When the boy came home, we both tried one. They were fabulous. Two thumbs up. Way up.

Tonight at the grocery store we bought another box. Maybe we aren't so meh about cake after all.