My mother, who lives 2 hours north of New Orleans, pointed out to me one day that the local Wal-Mart had begun to carry gluten free cake mixes and pasta. The Wal-Mart near me has been a little slow on the draw but long before she mentioned it I exclaimed with a cry of joy that Giant Eagle in the Waterfront had a little row of Betty Crocker GF cake blends.

My first impression was thank goodness a big name like Betty Crocker has figured out how to make their mixes gluten free. My next thought was, holy crap that’s a load of money for a cake mix. And so I resisted picking one up until my comrades at work got a free double chocolate cake from the department down the hall and after watching them have second helpings I walked to the local Shur-Save and picked up the yellow Betty Crocker cake mix for $4.95 and counted the hours til I could get home and experiment. Actually I don’t know why I didn’t pick up the chocolate mix, or both for that matter. I did get some Pillsbury 50% less sugar chocolate frosting though.

image courtesy of Whisk Kid

Of course by the end of the day I’d browsed through my Google Reader and found this adorable creation by Whisk Kid and thought well I’d just go right home and whip up a rainbow-albeit-chocolate-frosted-cake, because I’m nothing if not all about creative diversions. Dear Reader, I hope you’ve stuck with me long enough to know that nothing I ever plan out goes quite to the directions.

Surely enough, as I sat down to my computer this morning to pull up the link I’d starred in my goofy reader, Gmail threw up all over the internet and I lost my patience and trouped off to the kitchen (about 8 feet away from my chair at the moment) and figure it out myself.

I must say I’m impressed with the packaging for the Gf cakes. I know, what does that have to do with the taste? But my graphic designer background demands I comment on the follow-through of the famous Betty Crocker branding yet distinctiveness of this new line of cooking product. Okay, that said, I can say as far as ease this was a treat to make. While most cake mixes call for 3 main ingredients plus the dry mix (usually oil-water-eggs), the GF version was no more complicated with add-ins (marg-water-eggs-vanilla).

Okay, I was a little skeptical at first because the mix seemed really thin to me and turned to glue as soon as I added the first liquid….yuck.

As I added more ingredients though, it turned into the tastiest, lightest pre-mixed batter I’ve ever worked with. TASTY. I could have cat there and ate the entire bowl right there.

I even tried to do the whole rainbow thing, which wasn’t as easy as I’d somehow envisioned it. I just basically divided the batter into 3 parts and coloured 2 of these before I ate any more freaking batter so it would at least make it into the oven.

I decided I was too busy to make the actual cake so I pulled out the leftover Barney cupcake papers to use those up (don’t ask) and decided the whole colour layering thing was probably best left to Whisk Kid. Instead, I thought perhaps I could marble the batter and still come out looking like I knew a thing or two about baking because after all, Betty Crocker can make anyone look like they can bake, right?

Let’s just say my marbling didn’t go like I’d envisioned it either. Note to anyone trying this mix- the package says it makes 12 cupcakes. I felt a little burned on that. Not that I needed to find room in my kitchen for any more cupcakes than humanly necessary for 2 people to scarf down but seriously, $4.95 for a box and then it makes half the cupcakes a normal mix would? Betty Crocker, you have betrayed me.  I spooned it out to fill the tray up halfway, thinking I would swirl in my coloured batter and then topped them up on second thought. As you can see, I ended up just piling on the second batter and then ran out. I was thinking maybe I could stretch it to 2 batches but as most gluten free recipes for baked goods come out much denser, I filled them as close to the brim as possible to make them bigger.

And then Betty redeemed herself when I pulled open the door to the oven and was completely surprised at the tops of my little cakes. Look how high they rose! I was absolutely chuffed at these. They even look a teeny bit marbled How awesome is Betty?!

Taste Factor: Nom, nom, nom- huh? Fabulous. Light, airy, sweet and freaking delicious. What else is cool? They’re comparable to other yellow cake mixes from Betty Crocker in calories.

Poopy Factor: Nom, nom, nom- stop distracting me from my cake with these questions!