How to Make Exactly One Cupcake from a Box of Cake Mix

We’ve all been here: the craving for something sweet strikes and there’s nothing at home that’ll do. Get out of here, dried cranberries or half-empty bag of chocolate chips. Nope and nope. Mug cakes exist to solve this problem, but let’s be real: sometimes they taste a bit Frankensteined together.

That’s why I decided to bake a single, real-deal cupcake from a box of cake mix. But problematically, one large egg typically makes six cake-mix cupcakes. Sure, you could just whisk up an egg, use approximately 1/6 of it, and save (?) the rest of it. But that sounds really annoying.

So I needed to figure out how to bake a cupcake without eggs. I tested various common egg substitutes: banana, flaxseed, carbonated water + oil + water + baking powder and chia seeds, to name a few. All of them yielded cupcakes lacking in structure that emerged from the oven with sad little dips in top where there should have been domes. Then one day, I was making chicken salad, and it occurred to me that mayo has eggs and oil — two ingredients you mix into cake mix — and is famously used as a secret ingredient to add moisture to chocolate cake.

I fiddled around with stirring mayo into cake mix, and reader, let me tell you it worked spectacularly. It makes for an amped up, moister, more tender cupcake than any other cake mix cupcake I’ve ever had. Here’s what to do:

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons cake mix

1 tablespoon mayo

1 tablespoon water

Your cupcake topping of choice

Instructions:

Step 1: Prep. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and spray one well of a cupcake pan with nonstick spray.

Step 2: Combine the ingredients. Add the cake mix, mayo and water to a small bowl. Stir the ingredients together until just combined.

Step 3: Bake. Spoon the batter into the cupcake pan and bake until a toothpick inserted has no crumbs clinging to it, about 15 minutes. Cool the cupcake (or not) and frost it with anything you have around: frosting from a can, jam, chocolate sauce, fluff … hey, we’re not one to judge.

Related links:

5 Things to Make with Cake Mix

The 44 Best Cupcake Recipes to Celebrate Every Occasion

Crowd-Pleasing Cake Recipes