Costco has sold quite a few of Krusteaz’s easy-to-make products over the years. I recently spotted this Cinnamon Swirl Crumb Cake & Muffin Mix for the first time and thought I’d give it a try. In the past, I’ve found Krusteaz mixes easy to make and decent but not great tasting. Keep reading to find out how this cinnamon cake turned out.
Other Krusteaz products from Costco are the Krusteaz Buttermilk Pancake Mix, Krusteaz Meyer Lemon Bar Mix, Krusteaz Pumpkin Spice Quick Bread Mix and the Krusteaz Triple Chocolate Brownie Mix.
Location in Store
The mix is located in the baking aisle at Costco, near the flour and chocolate chips. The item number is 1757224.
Taste
The cake itself is quite plain. It’s just a basic, moderately sweet cake. It’s light and fluffy. Most of the flavor comes from the topping, which tastes like a mixture of cinnamon and sugar (which is what it looks like too).
The topping also adds a crunchy sugar texture. The overall combination is pretty much what you’d expect, which is a good thing. If you like cinnamon, you’ll probably like this cake!
The whole thing ended up being a bit on the crumbly side. I had a couple of pieces kind of fall apart on me, but most were okay. I think the ones that broke were probably from parts where one of my cake layers was on the thin side.
For how convenient this mix is to make, it’s pretty tasty. I don’t think it’ll surprise anyone as my cake tasted almost exactly like I expected it to, but it definitely didn’t disappoint.
Cost
The box comes with three pouches of cake mix and three topping pouches, costing $10.99 Canadian. I think the price is reasonable considering how convenient it is!
Convenience
I used my mix to make the basic crumb cake, and it was pretty easy. You can also make muffins from the mix if you prefer. The hardest part about making the crumb cake was layering the batter.
It mixed up pretty thick and it didn’t seem like there was quite enough to make nice layers. In fairness, I did use a 9” x 9” pan instead of an 8” x 8” one, so that probably didn’t help.
The cake turned out pretty well. I baked it for 45 minutes and that seemed about right. I probably could have pulled it out a few minutes earlier, but it didn’t seem over-baked. Oh, and it made my house smell great. That’s a nice bonus.
The box has a best-before date that’s a year and four months from when I purchased it. You do need to have an egg and vegetable oil to make the cake as well.
Nutrition
Calories
A quarter cup of cake mix and one and a half tablespoons of topping contains 170 calories, three grams of fat, 36 grams of carbohydrates, one gram of fibre, 23 grams of sugar, one gram of protein and 240 milligrams of sodium.
I had already assumed the cake was high in calories, sugar and carbohydrates so I’m not surprised.
Ingredients
There are many unhealthy ingredients but I wouldn’t expect it to be any different since this is a cake mix! Ingredients I don’t love seeing are sugar, soybean oil, palm oil and “natural flavour”. The cinnamon swirl cake mix contains wheat and may contain egg, milk, soy and tree nuts.
Scoring
Taste: 7.5/10
Cost: 8.5/10
Convenience: 8/10
Nutrition: 0/10
Overall
Give it a try!
This isn’t nearly as good as homemade coffee cake or cinnamon swirl cake but it’s still tasty and very convenient! If you have a last-minute coffee guest or need to bring something to a book club, this works well!
Have you tried the Costco Krusteaz Cinnamon Swirl Crumb Cake? What did you think of it?
Please note that this review was not paid for or sponsored by any third party. This product was purchased by Costcuisine for the purpose of producing this review. The opinions in this review are strictly those of Costcuisine. Costcuisine is not affiliated with Costco or any of its suppliers. In the event that Costcuisine receives compensation for a post from the manufacturer of a product or some other third party, the arrangement will be clearly disclosed (including where the manufacturer of a product provides Costcuisine with a free sample of the product).
I have bought this several times over the years and usually pick this up in WA State (more Krusteaz options than in Canada). I find the sugar/cake ratio VERY sweet and too much so I always use 1/2 the sugar packet as the topping only and do not layer as instructed. You still get the crunch and cinnamon flavour but on a far lesser scale of sugar intake. I do this for a cake, loaf or muffins and all turned out great.
I bought the mix as I needed to bake for a group event. I mixed up 1 batch as muffins to try it. It made 12 good size muffins which we found were too sweet. For the bulk baking I mixed the 2 pack and added 1 more lg egg and 1 cup all purpose flour with 3/4 tsp baking powder. The result yields 30 muffins, which were not too sweet and were nice and moist, not crumbly. I will purchase this mix again, and will continue to add the extra e/flour/bakgpwdr