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What To Do When Amazon Sends You 50 Pounds of Cake Mix

This article is written by a student writer from the Spoon University at SLU chapter.

Due to a couple errors by Amazon, my mom ended up with 25 pounds of chocolate cake mix and 25 pounds of vanilla cake mix. So there is currently 50 pounds of cake mix at my house. Yes, you read that correctly, 50 pounds — wowza. And this is a result of her attempting to purchase just one bag of all-purpose gluten-free flour. Now I’m not bashing Amazon at all, I love it, but WTH are you supposed to do with 50 pounds of cake mix? 

I decided to do a few calculations (that sounded nerdier than I wanted it to…) and I figured out what you could do with 50 pounds of cake mix. With a little bit of creativity, you’re options are endless.  

1. Cake 

Easter cake carrot
Julia Hedelman

Starting with the obvious answer: 1 cup of flour weighs around 0.28 pounds, so about 3.6 cups equals 1 pound. The average boxed cake mix contains about 3 1/2 cups and makes a 2 layer cake. So, with all of this cake mix you could make about 51 two-layered cakes. Cake for days. And weeks. Almost a whole years worth of cakes, permitting you make one per week. With so many ways to spice up a normal cake mix, each cake can be different.   

2. Cupcakes

Cake Mix buttercream cream
Nicole Laszlo

Each boxed cake recipe makes roughly 24 cupcakes. So, 51 cakes multiplied by 24 comes out to be 1,224 cupcakes.  After making over 1,000 cupcakes, I bet we would have acquired the skills to be competitive on Cupcake Wars.

3. Cookies

Which Holiday Cookie Are You? College Edition chocolate sweet
Jocelyn Hsu

In case you tire of cake, cake cookies straight from the oven can melt your troubles. How does 1,530 cookies sound? To me, it sounds like I wouldn’t need to rely on Girl Scout cookies for my cookie fix, ever again.  

4. Mason Jar Cake Mixes

gifts sweet cream
Maria Serghiou

This hipster mason jar cake mix trend is a cute and cheap gift idea.  Beyond the ease of cake mix being easily transformed with a few household ingredients, you won’t have to buy anymore gifts (about 50) for a while. 

5. Pancakes

Cake Mix cheese cake
Photo by Celeste Holben

If you are tired of cranking out the same old blueberry pancakes, this cake batter pancake recipe is for you. Using this recipe you could make around 408 colorful pancakes. My brunch game just got so much better.

6. Mug Cakes

Cake Mix cream chocolate
Lila Thulin

Since each mug cake has about 3 tablespoons of flour, I’m not even going to calculate how many individual mug dessert cakes you can make. Calculating that number involves too much math. If I’m being honest with myself, I will probably mess it up. So we are just going to say that the number is a lot. If you have a burning desire to know the answer, this calculation would be a great way to procrastinate. Just saying.

Or, if you have no desire to increase your baking repertoire, you could use the bags of flour as weights. You think I’m kidding? Run up and down the stairs with them strapped to your back, bench press, bicep curls, the sky’s the limit. Who needs to go to the gym when you could get swole with cake? That’s probably the first time you heard swole and cake in the same sentence.

So, if you happen to have 50 pounds of cake mix lying around your apartment or if you returned from the grocery with a Betty Crocker box in hand you can impress your friends with these nifty recipes.  

I am a Nutrition and Dietetics major at St. Louis University. My hobbies include baking, reading, and randomly singing Disney and One Direction songs. I am a coffee and gluten free enthusiast and my dream job is to travel the world.