Most cakes start with the same basic ingredients, but flavorings set each recipe apart. Cake gets its flavor from different ingredients including powders like cocoa, liquids like flavored extracts or mix-in ingredients like dried fruit or pieces of chocolate. Whether you make your cake batter from scratch or from a boxed mix, experimenting with flavorings is a simple way to jazz up your cakes. Maintain a balance between wet and dry ingredients so the cake batter doesn’t become too runny or too thick.
Step 1
Replace part of the liquid in the recipe with brewed coffee. The coffee flavor goes particularly well with chocolate cake.
Step 2
Add 2 teaspoons of flavored extract to the batter. In addition to traditional vanilla extract, try almond, peppermint, rum, coconut or lemon extract. Another option is to use 1 teaspoon each of two types of extracts. Look for different extract flavors near the vanilla in the baking section of the grocery store.