• Strawberry cake – use a yellow/butter cake mix and strawberry pudding. Dust with powdered sugar.
• Lemon cake – use a lemon/yellow cake mix and lemon pudding. Zest a lemon and put some of the zest in with the batter and the rest in icing. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and replace water with as much lemon juice as you extract. If you get less than a cup, add water to equal a cup before adding to the batter. Mix together powdered sugar and water to desired consistency and add in lemon zest. Spoon over the warm cake so it will absorb.
• Pistachio (green) cake – use a yellow/butter cake mix and pistachio pudding.
• Coconut/Hawaiian cake – use a pineapple supreme cake mix and coconut crème/vanilla pudding. Replace water with a 8 ounce can of crushed pineapple. Or, just use water and keep the pineapple for the icing. Stir in ½ cup of shredded/flaked coconut into the batter. Mix together a simple powdered sugar and water icing and sprinkle the top with coconut before it dries.
• Chocolate chip cake – use a devil’s food or German chocolate cake mix and chocolate pudding. Stir in 1 cup chocolate chips to the batter before pouring into the pan.
• Red velvet cake – us a red velvet cake mix and vanilla or chocolate pudding.
• Firecracker cake – use a white cake mix and vanilla or cheesecake pudding. Separate the batter into 3rds. Put 1 part in 2 separate bowls and pour the third part in the bottom of a greased Bundt pan. In one of the bowls of batter, drop 3-4 drops of red food coloring and 3-4 drops of blue food coloring in the other. Stir up each color separately making sure it is the desired color. Drop by alternating spoonfuls on top of the white batter. Using a toothpick or wooden skewer, drag the utensil through the colors to make a swirl design with the red, blue and white batters. Carefully drag the colors together so they don’t over blend and make a purple cake.