Review of Duncan Hines Frosting Creations

I love homemade frosting. Unless I'm in a serious time crunch, I try to avoid canned store-bought frosting. Honestly it doesn't take that much time and effort to make a decent frosting from scratch, and I can guarantee it'll taste better than anything sold in the baking supply aisle.

Nonetheless, I recently had a coupon for the new Duncan Hines Frosting Creations. It's a plain white frosting, and you buy a flavor packet (sold separately) to add to it. In addition to my coupon, it was on sale, so I decided I'd give it a try. I also have to admit I was a little intrigued when I saw the cotton candy flavor.

Even though we already had a birthday cake for Mathilda over the weekend, I couldn't let her real birthday go by without singing "Happy Birthday" and letting her blow out three candles. I returned once again to my trusty Betty Crocker cookbook, this time choosing the chocolate cake recipe.

Here is the recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook, which I followed to the letter with one small exception. After beating all of the ingredients together, I stirred in half a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. It was a good addition to the recipe, now duly noted in my cookbook.

Chocolate Cake
2 1/4 cups all-purpose or 2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 2/3 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup baking cocoa
1 1/4 cups water
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 large eggs

1. Heat oven to 350 F. Grease (or spray with no stick spray) bottom and sides of one 13x9-inch pan, two 9-inch round pans, or three 8-inch round pans with shortening; lightly flour.
2. In large bowl, beat all ingredients with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly. Beat on high speed 3 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Pour into pan(s).
3. Bake 13x9-inch pan 40-45 minutes, round pans 30-35 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool rectangle in pan on wire rack. Cool rounds 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire rack. Cool completely before frosting, about one hour.

 After baking the cake, I followed the directions for mixing the frosting.

I made a hole in the middle, going all the way down to the bottom, with a dinner knife.

I poured the entire contents of the flavor packet into the hole.

I stirred with my dinner knife.

Eventually it looked like this.

My suggestion is that when you think you have the flavor packet completely mixed into the frosting, keep stirring for another minute or so. When I frosted the cake, I realized that I hadn't stirred as well as I thought I had.

Here's the frosted cake

For a finishing touch, I added chocolate shavings. I took a vegetable peeler to a Hershey's bar to make the pieces curl a bit. It works better if the chocolate is cold, and I found it easier to shave the thin edges of the chocolate instead of trying to shave over the flat surface of the chocolate bar.

The best I can say about Duncan Hines Frosting Creations is that I love the color and the kids liked the taste. I'll also throw in that it was easy to mix and easy to spread. As far as the color, the pictures don't do it justice. I think the combination of the blue frosting and the brown chocolate shavings looks great. Unfortunately, I didn't think it tasted much like cotton candy at all. The kids thought it did, but I'm fairly certain they wouldn't have been able to blindly tell me it was cotton candy flavored frosting without already knowing that's what it was. Also, I polled them and asked if they liked this frosting better or the homemade coconut cream cheese frosting I made the other day, and they all said the homemade frosting was better. There are several other flavors available, but I'd only be tempted to try them if I once again had a great coupon combined with a sale.

Have you tried this frosting? What did you think?

I was not compensated for this post, nor was I provided with a free product. I bought Duncan Hines Frosting Creations. All opinions are my own.