The 19 Best Cake Mix Cakes and Desserts

Easy Fresh Blueberry Cake With a Cake Mix — The Spruce / Cara Cormack

Cake mix recipes are easy to mix up and decorate, and there's the bonus of less mess to clean up afterward. We've rounded up some of the most popular cake mix recipes, including snack cakes, upside-down cakes, bar cookies, coffee cakes, Bundt cakes, and layer cakes.

The 6 Best Boxed Cake Mixes so They Think It's Homemade

01 of 19

Moist Southern Coconut Cake

The Spruce Eats / Diana Chistruga

Holes are poked in the warm moist southern coconut cake (poke cake) and then it is topped with a simple mixture of sweetened condensed milk and coconut cream. The cooled cake is frosted with whipped cream and flaked coconut.
02 of 19

Strawberry Poke Cake

The Spruce Eats / Julia Hartbeck

A poke cake is one of the most delightful and easiest desserts to prepare. The cake itself is made from a boxed cake mix that is "poked" when warm, creating tunnels into the cake.
03 of 19

Easy Fresh Blueberry Cake

The Spruce / Cara Cormack

This easy fresh blueberry cake is made with a yellow cake mix, but a lemon cake or white cake may be used. The blueberries give the cake excellent flavor, and they make beautiful polka dots throughout the cake.
04 of 19

Lemon Pudding Cake

The Spruce Eats / Cara Cormack

The perfect dessert for lemon lovers, no one has to know how easy this cake is to make, and most likely no one will guess the main ingredients are cake mix and pudding mix. Once baked, the moist and flavorful cake is drizzled with a sweet lemon juice glaze, creating the perfect finishing touch.

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05 of 19

Peach Cobbler Cake

The Spruce Eats / Elizabeth Briskin

This peach cobbler with boxed cake mix is also known as peach dump cake. A cross between a cobbler and a cake, it is made with yellow cake mix, cream cheese, canned peaches, and instant vanilla pudding.
06 of 19

German Chocolate Upside Down Cake

The Spruce Eats / Christine Ma

This fabulous chocolate upside-down cake is very easy to prepare with a German chocolate cake mix. Cream cheese, coconut, and chopped pecans make it an extra-special dessert, and it makes its own topping!
07 of 19

Ooey Gooey Butter Cake

The Spruce Eats / Julia Hartbeck

This ooey gooey butter cake recipe calls for plenty of cream cheese and butter, making this a rich upgrade to a standard boxed cake mix.
08 of 19

Peanut Butter Cupcakes

The Spruce Eats / Julia Hartbeck

These easy peanut butter cupcakes are super easy to prepare with chunky peanut butter. Feel free to replace the chunky peanut butter with creamy. The recipe includes purchased chocolate frosting, but a homemade peanut butter frosting may be used.

Continue to 9 of 19 below.
09 of 19

Butterfinger Cake

The Spruce / Kristina Vanni

This Butterfinger cake recipe is a great way to use up leftover Halloween candy, but it's also great at any time of year. Boxed chocolate cake, sweetened condensed milk, caramel, and Butterfingers turn this into a showstopping dessert.
10 of 19

Strawberry-Rhubarb Dump Cake

arfo / Getty Images

This super easy strawberry-rhubarb dump cake is made with layers of ingredients, including fresh diced rhubarb, strawberry flavored gelatin and a cake mix. It's a great way to use that spring and summer rhubarb!
11 of 19

Cake Mix Cookies

The Spruce Eats

Using a purchased cake mix to make cookies is a fun way to save time in the kitchen. This recipe will work with any flavor of cake mix and a variety of mix-ins, giving you lots of options for flavor combos.
12 of 19

Pistachio Pudding Cake

The Spruce Eats / Diana Chistruga

Colorful, moist, and flavorful, this pistachio pudding cake is an impressive dessert to take along to a party or potluck. It's an easy cake, too. The cake is a breeze to make with a cake mix and a box of instant pistachio pudding, and it can be baked in a Bundt cake pan or rectangular cake pan.

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13 of 19

Easy Cake Mix Peach Upside-Down Cake

The Spruce / Morgan Walker

This easy cake mix peach upside-down cake is made in a rectangular cake pan, or divide the batter and ingredients and bake it in two 8-inch round cake pans.
14 of 19

Blueberry Cobbler

The Spruce Eats / Julia Hartbeck

Prep time is a mere 15 minutes for this berry cobbler. Simply make the blueberry mixture, then dump the flavor of cake mix you desire on top and bake. You could use frozen blueberries in this recipe as well as a mix of berries.
15 of 19

Easy Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Diana Rattray

Shredded zucchini, chopped nuts, and chocolate chips give this easy chocolate zucchini cake loads of flavor and texture.
16 of 19

Blueberry Dump Cake

The Spruce Eats / Preethi Venkatram

No matter how busy you are, you'll have time to make this quick and delicious dump cake. This is a great recipe to have at hand for those occasions when you need to fix up dessert in a hurry.

Continue to 17 of 19 below.
17 of 19

Banana Poke Cake

The Spruce / Diana Rattray

This irresistible banana pudding poke cake has all the flavors of a delicious homemade banana pudding. It is unbelievably easy to prepare with a cake mix, vanilla wafers, packaged instant pudding, and frozen whipped topping.
18 of 19

Cake Mix Brownies

Kristina Vanni

When your sweet tooth needs a treat, these incredibly easy four-ingredient brownies do the trick. All you need is a box of pudding mix, milk, a box of cake mix, and a bag of chocolate chips. That's it!
19 of 19

Cherry Dump Cake

The Spruce / Eric Kleinberg

The flavors of cherry and almonds go together beautifully in this pretty pink cake. So named because everything is mixed in the baking pan, this dump cake is quick to prepare, requiring only four ingredients.