Vacuum Sealed Cake Mix

Would you use a cake mix that’s 10 years old?

Over the weekend, I was trying to scrounge up more half gallon jars. I was looking at jars of wheat that could be dumped into a 5 gallon bucket, jars of pinto beans that could be dumped into a 5 gallon bucket, jars of cake mixes . .

The cake mixes in a jar made me smile. I remember like it was yesterday when I found those cake mixes on sale, bought about a dozen of them, brought them home and vacuum sealed them. The good thing about having blogged forever is that there’s a blog post about it – dated October 11, 2012.

Of course, the date on the jar corresponds to the date on the blog post. Just two months shy of having been in the jar, vacuum sealed, for 10 years. I figured it was as good a time as any to use one of these packets of cake mix.

I was expecting it to smell rancid but it did not. I was expecting it to taste rancid but it did not. I figured if there was a problem then, it would be that the cake wouldn’t rise so I decided to make an Ooey Gooey Butter Cake.

I added the melted butter to the cake mix and before adding the eggs, I tasted the batter and it tasted fine so I proceeded with baking the cake and it turned out just fine.

All I did was take the plastic bag out of the box, write on the “margin” of the bag what flavor the cake mix was and stuff two of them down into a half gallon jar, then vacuum seal them.

I cut out the baking instructions and stuffed them down into the box with the jars.

That whole thing worked so well. I’ll do it again if I find cake mixes on sale but I’ll probably use them within five or six years. No need to keep them 10 years. I only had one jar left and I wanted to see how long it would last but I wanted to bake a cake so . . I used one of the cake mixes. I stuck the other one in the freezer and I”ll use it soon.

We can definitely extend the shelf life of many items that go rancid simply by vacuum sealing them and keeping them in a cool spot away from light.