I'm Lt Paul Jennings, and I'm made of chemicals

If I had to count the number of times that I bought something to assuage my sweet tooth while simultaneously knowing that the item was going to be horrible, I certainly would have a bit of a task in front of me. It's an admitted weakness of mine - the semi-constant cravings for sweet treats. Where The Girl will content herself with a smallest morsel of high-quality chocolate, I'll be equally as likely to turn to a half gallon of ice cream that I would classify as "just okay." It's not a good trait, but it's the kind of thing that leads me to trying new-to-the-store product like Kroger's Cupcake Kit - Slice 'N Bake.


I offer the following review so that no others will have to follow me down this dark path.

The cupcake kit was $2.79 - for six cupcakes, so a fair bit higher than a standard box cake mix from which you can get something in the range of 24 cupakes with a bit of stirring and pouring rather than the simple slice 'n bake method shown below. So, if you're going to be paying more, you'd better be getting either a whole lot better results or a whole lot more convenience.

The package laid bare. Clockwise from top right, the box...nine paper cupcake wrappers...multi-colored sprinkles...the icing tube...the batter tube
The cupcake batter tube split and peeled away. The batter is oddly neither as firm as cookie dough nor as runny as batter should be. It's like cutting room temperature butter. And it's not tasty to lick off of the peeled tube.
Six cupcake "squares" in their tin in the toaster oven. No reason to heat up the full oven for today's experiment. I need Calen's cool camera with the aquarium setting to take pictures through the glass better.
With slightly better lighting and a few minutes of heating (the package calls for 18-20 minutes, but this was after about 15 minutes, and I only went for 17 total before pulling the cupcakes.) Notice the weird cracking of the top - more like a corn muffin than a cupcake - and the weird color differences between the darkened top and the still pale innards.
Pulled from the oven after 17 minutes. The toothpick came out clean, so I pronounced them done.
In all their iced and sprinkled glory. Admittedly, they could have been more neatly iced, but I was in for the tasting and devouring, not for the artistry.
I will absolutely give the cupcakes points for ease. I had no clean-up other than a couple of knives, and if it weren't for the photography (better photos than mine can be found here), I would've had these things in the oven in about three minutes, waited seventeen minutes, then had 'em iced in about two minutes once they were cooled some.

As for the taste, I can only describe the taste as chemical, not something for which most folks strive in making their baked goods. I tried the batter baked and unbaked, and the chemical taste was present in both batches. The sell-by date hadn't yet been reached, so I can only assume that this taste is real and going to be present in any of the cupcake kits that you buy. The chemical taste of the cupcakes, however, was luckily drowned by the even stronger chemical taste of the icing.

I tried a couple of tastes of the icing straight from the tube and ended up throwing most of the unused tube away. As someone who has bought tubs of pre-made icing from the store and eaten them over a few days with a spoon, I can safely say that the icing had to be horrible to convince me to throw away a large portion of it rather than downing it, and the icing certainly was horrible. It wasn't bland, inoffensive, or even a pale imitation of freshly-made icing. It was simply an abomination to the frosting family, which surprises me considering that any number of companies have managed successfully in the frosting market.

The consistency and mouth feel of the cakes and their icing were fine, and the cakes were cooked correctly. They just tasted horrible.

To the numbers...

On a scale of 1 to Marvelous, one being the worst, these rank as a blech.

Steer clear, folks. Nothing to eat here.

Thanks to cyber erik for the nice, clean product photo at the very top of the page.