Make An Easy Streusel Topping With Your Favorite Boxed Cake Mix

Streusel sounds fancier than it really is. While it's the perfect crumbly topping that makes treats like pumpkin streusel muffins and cinnamon pear streusel bread feel like they came straight from your favorite bakery, you don't need much to whip up a basic version. Most recipes just include butter, flour, and sugar, although some can veer off a little and incorporate flavorings like cinnamon or nutmeg.

But for an even easier method than pulling the ingredients together separately, just deploy your favorite boxed cake mix along with butter. Cake mix is essentially just a combination of all the dry ingredients you'd need to bake a cake, so you'll find the flour and sugar you need here, but you'll also get a couple of added benefits. These boxes come in plenty of flavors, so you easily have more room for creativity (and less need for extra ingredients) than you would with your average streusel made from scratch. And because you're elevating your mixture beyond just butter, flour, and sugar, you'll get a richer, tastier topping in the end. However, because you only need two components, the whole process becomes streamlined.

If you want to try out a cake mix-infused streusel, here's how to do it: Once you've selected your box, you can either mix it with cold or melted butter. The former is a little more difficult but will give you a more crumbly texture, while the latter is the simplest method and will result in more evenly sized clumps. If you're going with melted butter, you'll want to use up to six tablespoons for every two cups of cake mix, and combine everything together with either a fork or your hands. But for cold sticks, chop them into one-inch bits (using about two cups per box of cake mix) and combine the two with a pastry cutter or the paddle attachment on a stand mixer.

But before you get into the (minimal) work involved, pick a tasty flavor and pair it to your favorite dessert. Beyond just chocolate, vanilla, and yellow cake, you can choose from options like strawberry, carrot, peanut butter, Devil's food, pumpkin spice, lemon, funfetti, orange, red velvet, and gingerbread. Then there are plenty of ways to use it. Whip up a crumbly lemon streusel to sprinkle in a strawberry and apricot parfait or over cardamom blueberry muffins, make fall-flavored treats like caramel apple donuts with a pumpkin spice topping, or create rich desserts like decadent peanut butter pie with a Devil's Food mixture.