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North Carolina resident Kendric Jacobs has a word of advice for those who use boxed cake mix: “Don’t listen to that box. Listen to me.”
That’s how he begins his TikTok video, posted July 6, that has home bakers in a chocolaty chokehold.
He then tells viewers to buy either “yellow”- or “butter”-flavored boxed cake mix.
“That box gonna say three eggs,” he says. “You gonna do four eggs. It’s gonna say 1/3 cup of oil. You gonna do a stick of melted butter.”
Instead of one cup of water, you use one cup of milk, then add some vanilla extract.
“Set that oven to 315,” he says. “That box gonna say 350. Don’t worry about the box,” he says, instructing viewers to use a 9x11 pan instead of the 9x13 one listed on the back of most cake boxes.
After baking for a longer time than usual — 37 minutes — and cooling, it’s time for the frosting, specifically, Betty Crocker Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Frosting, popped into the microwave for 20 seconds.
“Make sure it’s pourable. It don’t need to be hot,” he says. “It just need to be pourable, because if you do it at room temperature, it’s gonna tear up the top of that cake. We don’t want that.”
After pouring on the frosting, he tells folks to let it set. Then, it’s done, and as Jacobs takes a bite of the slice he’s holding, he says, “It’s the best little box chocolate cake you could ever make in your life, I promise you.”
Jacobs’ instructional video garnered more than 3 million views and thousands of comments, with many jokingly cursing him for putting such an irresistible recipe on their feeds.
“Made it your way! It was delicious!” wrote one commenter, posting a picture of their cake with slices missing.
“Now listen here MR! I’m trying to lose this stomach and back and this recipe gone make me back slide...I will NOT!!!...You say 1 stick of MELTED butter?🤣🤣🤣,” another wrote.
“Don’t listen to that man that gave the recipe for chocolate cake,” one person who tried out his recipe says, before revealing the reason is that she already ate half of the cake.
Jacobs, who owns a skincare brand called Simply Blvck Apothecary, says he’s not a professional baker but that science is behind both skincare and baking.
“They’re very similar,” Jacobs tells TODAY.com, adding that like cake mix, skincare products are usually a combination of ingredients that folks can add to based on need and preference.
He says his love of cooking started at nine years old, when the responsibility fell to the oldest sibling.
“I pretty much helped everybody grow up,” he says. “I was a latchkey kid, so of course I had to make sure my brother had lunch when we got off the bus, so it comes second nature, and then skincare came later.”
“Once you know how to cook, everything else comes easy,” he continues. “Oftentimes, with box mixes and things like that, it’s easy to doctor up.”
“Everybody is not a professional baker,” Jacobs says in a follow-up video from July 12. “Everybody does not have all of the ingredients nor the finances to go get scratch cake stuff, but we do got $1 or two to get a box cake.”
A Comparison Between the Box’s Recipe and Kendric’s Instructions
Given that people are calling this cake a “knife in pan” recipe, meaning the knife doesn’t ever leave the pan due to how often it’s eaten, I had to try it.
I typically make my cakes from scratch, but I always follow other bakers’ recipes, sticking to ones that look like they’ll yield a moist crumb or I’ve found result in a decadent cake (like Zoha Malik’s to-die-for Vanilla Bean Sheet Cake, reverse-engineered from Trader Joe’s Chantilly Cream Vanilla Bean Mini Sheet Cake).
While I’ve had some great cakes baked from the box by other people, when I make a boxed mix, I’m always disappointed, even though I’m following the instructions to a T. That might have been my problem.
So, I baked two Betty Crocker Favorites Super Moist Yellow cakes, one following the box’s instructions and ingredients, which say to add 1 cup of water, 1/4 cup of vegetable oil and 3 eggs, and bake at 350 F.
Jacobs’ version has have four times the butter, making it much more decadent.
The first cake I baked was Jacobs’, and when I took it out, it looked more moist than any boxed cake I’d ever made. A good sign!
The boxed cake’s instructions cake yielded a browner result in comparison — so much so, I thought I put it in for too long. It’s probably because the box’s instructions tell you to bake it at a higher temperature than Jacobs does, and there’s deceptively more surface area in a 9x13 pan than a 9x11 one. By the time I took the cake out of the oven, it was pancake-thin, measuring 1.2 inches tall.
I took a bite and felt that familiar “meh” feeling I usually do. The middle is soft, but the outside had formed a crust, and who wants a crusty cake? Not I.
Regarding the other cake, I actually took a bite of it while speaking with Jacobs, and said, “Wow,” “Fantastic,” and even “Jesus” a couple times.
There really is no comparison; Jacobs’ cake is much more scrumptious and moist. Low and slow is clearly the way to go.
Will Jacobs continue to share his culinary wisdom with his fans?
“I don’t need to gatekeep any secrets,” he says. “I just put the people on.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
