We Tried All Of Dolly Parton's Baking Mixes By Duncan Hines, And Here's How They Taste

It is hard to find an industry where Dolly Parton hasn't had an impact. Not only is Dolly Parton a musical treasure, but she's been in movies, runs a successful charity giving away millions of books, and has her own theme park, Dollywood. Parton has dabbled in baking before, with her own cookbook co-authored by her sister, Rachel Parton George, and now, she is here to help out casual home bakers. Parton has partnered with popular bake mix brand Duncan Hines for a line of mixes packaged in perfectly pink boxes. The line was first released in early 2022 and has since expanded to include a range of products.

Parton may have many projects, but she does seem to care about quality. It is no wonder then that she chose to partner with Duncan Hines, as the company is a pioneer in the baking mix industry. When Duncan Hines (the person) was originally approached about using his name, Hines' requirement was that he get the final say on whether a product went out so he could protect his reputation of upholding quality.

With the names of these two greats attached to this line of products, the bar is set high and we set out to determine if they live up to the hype. We'll explain more about our methodology at the end of this article, but in short, we tried every baking mix currently in the Dolly Parton Duncan Hines line and this is how they fared. 

As someone who makes cornbread from scratch on a fairly regular basis, I had hesitations about this product. However, Dolly Parton and Duncan Hines really delivered on this one. I opted to make them as cornbread muffins. This is the same process as making a loaf of cornbread, you just divide the batter into 12 muffin tins instead of putting it in a pan. All you need is milk, an egg, and melted butter. While this is more than some other mixes require, it is still easy to make.

The batter mixes together beautifully, with all the lumps beating out easily, and the result was even better. These cornbread muffins are light but full of texture. The yellow corn meal maintains a thicker crumb but does not get bogged down and heavy. The bread is also incredibly moist and stayed that way the next day.

This cornbread was definitely on the sweet side — while not cloying, the sweetness is definitely present. If you want to jazz it up, Dolly offers a jalepeño cornbread variation, including cheese and peppers, which would help cut the sweetness.

The biscuits are another pleasant surprise. For these, all you need is butter and milk, and the mix does the rest. Unlike some biscuit mixes that simply have you mix all the ingredients in, this one instructs you to cut in the butter and ensure it is cold. This is a key step when making biscuits from scratch, and it builds those buttery, delicious pockets that give them their signature flakey texture. You can tell Dolly Parton is a Southern girl because this mix respects the biscuit and there's no cutting corners.

Both the flavor and texture of this biscuit are spot on. The biscuits puff up nicely and easily pull apart, revealing flakey layers. They are savory and tangy while maintaining an unbelievably buttery flavor. I was concerned that the biscuit called for regular milk, not buttermilk, but Dolly had my back. The mix includes powdered buttermilk and sour cream, which rounds out the flavor.

My one nitpick is that there are not that many ingredients in a biscuit, and this mix still requires some technique to cut in the butter. Therefore, I'm not convinced this mix saves much time or effort beyond not needing to keep buttermilk on hand. Still, I think you could serve these to most people, and they would not guess they were from a box.

We have ranked brownie mixes before, and Duncan Hines did not fare too well. While these are not the best box brownies I've ever had (it is hard to beat Ghirardelli), I am happy to say that this Dolly Parton mix is better than the standard Duncan Hines chocolate brownies — perfectly good in a pinch.

To make these brownies, you mix an egg, some milk, and melted butter with the powdered mix. The secret weapon here is its one final component — a packet of fudge that you mix into the batter. This adds an extra gooey component that is often missing from a purely cocoa powder brownie.

Right off the bat, these brownies had that signature crackly top, and this was a good start. I worried that they might become too cakey. Brownies should be dense and fudgy, not overly light and delicate. These brownies are perfectly moist and offer a slight chew.

While they are good and chewy, they are a little too sweet, and I felt the cocoa flavor could be more present. They taste almost like milk chocolate instead of semi-sweet chocolate, but this will come down to personal preference. One final note: some have complained they found the brownies too salty. I did not, but I also used unsalted butter, which may make a difference.

I have some mixed feelings about the caramel turtle brownie mix. While the caramel and nut components were good, the brownie itself was distinctly mediocre.

This mix starts off the same as its simpler cousin above: butter, milk, an egg, and the mix. There is one crucial difference though: this box does not include fudge. This results in a brownie that is a little dryer, and just generally not as decadent.

The turtle components include chopped walnuts in the batter and a packet of caramel sauce to drizzle on top. It actually could have done with a few more nuts. Nuts are expensive, but I had whole pieces of brownie with hardly any nuts to be found. The mix relies on the caramel drizzle on top to provide moisture and a flavor boost, but this does not change the fact the mix itself is just average.

There are two ways to make this mix: the classic banana nut muffin or as a chocolate chip banana bread. We have previously tried this mix as part of the banana bread, and really enjoyed it, however, the muffin version of this mix didn't quite live up to expectations.

The first thing I noticed is that this mix still requires a number of additional ingredients and steps. You need eggs, milk, butter, oil, and then more butter to make a cinnamon sugar crumble topping. At that point, it felt silly to make this from a box. I noticed a similar problem with the banana bread, which requires bananas and chocolate chips. 

I could have forgiven the laborious process had the muffins been good, but they were not. Once again, I felt there were not enough nuts. The pieces were small and far between. The texture was far too light and not exactly muffin-like, far more like a cupcake. Finally, instead of a natural banana flavor, these muffins taste like banana runts candy. This was not the case in the bread, as you add your own real bananas to that mix.

The saving grace of this mix is the crumble topping. While somewhat messy to put on, this feature made these muffins more interesting.

On the whole, muffins were really the weak link in this collection. The baked treats are undeniably delicious but can be hard to get right in box mix form, and these blueberry ones suffered from many of the same problems as the banana muffins.

Once again, the mix contains a cumbersome additional ingredients list requiring milk, eggs, butter, oil, and more butter for the topping. Yet with all this work, you end up with muffins with only a hint of blueberry and a cupcake-like flavor and texture. Instead of beautiful mounded muffin tops, it produces flare tops with little structure. You'd think that, with all the ingredient requirements, they could have a person add some fresh frozen blueberries because the teeny tiny dried ones in the mix barely count for anything.

Once again the crumbly streusel topping helps to add some interest to the muffins. But at the end of the day I would take a slightly dry grocery store muffin over these box mix ones.

You can usually tell how good something is based on how quickly it disappears, and this cinnamon swirl crumb cake barely lasted a day before it was devoured. This cake requires eggs, milk, and butter and comes together in a snap.

The batter mixes up beautifully. The hardest part — which really isn't hard at all — is pouring half the batter in first, then sprinkling a layer of cinnamon sugar topping, and then more batter and more topping. This creates a layered effect.

The end result is a beautifully pillowed cake that is both moist and delicate while maintaining its structure. The cake batter itself is just a good sweet vanilla cake, and it is moist and delicious without being in your face about it. This lets the cinnamon sugar really shine and become a prominent flavor while adding an interesting crunch to the mix.

This cake is good for dessert, breakfast, or any time you want a sweet treat. Pair it with a cup of coffee and get ready for a good time.

There are two components to this cake: the coconut cake itself and the creamy buttercream frosting. Dolly also includes a variation where you fill the cake with some vanilla pudding, but I stuck with the classic. Now look, this is not Tom Cruise's holiday coconut bundt cake. And just to clarify, if he wanted to put me on his annual list, I would not say no. Back on track, Dolly's offering is a surprisingly good cake, and it takes just milk, eggs, and melted butter to bring it together.

I made this mix as cupcakes rather than a single cake. The cupcakes dome beautifully and have a brown exterior and a pale-colored interior. Initially, I was worried there wouldn't be much coconut flavor, as you don't add your own coconut flakes on top, there are no coconut shreds, and the smell isn't that powerful. These fears were put to rest when I tried it, though. The coconut hits you hard but is not overwhelming. The mix has coconut flour and coconut cream powder in it, which gives it a natural coconut flavor and prevents it from smelling like a car air freshener. The texture is light, with a crumb that holds together tightly.

The frosting, though, was less impressive. It is neither creamy nor buttery, and because there was no butter in its ingredients, it had a sticky corn syrup taste.

The southern style banana cake mix takes many elements from the muffin but makes it work much better. This cake comes together much faster than the muffins, and the batter is pale yellow and bakes into a lovely cake by the end.

I baked these in two rounds to make a double-layer cake. The texture is what you'd expect from a decent box mix: light and fluffy. While this didn't work for the muffins, it works very well for the cake. Similarly, while this cake still doesn't taste like real bananas, that artificial candy flavor works much better for this mix than it did for the muffins. It just feels better in a sweet confection rather than a hearty muffin.

Once again, though, the frosting was not great. This is the same frosting that is used for the coconut cake, but I discovered one can of frosting is not enough for two layers of cake, despite the package claiming it is.

Overall, this cake was fine. That said, it did not blow me away and I don't think I would get it again.

This may be Dolly's favorite chocolate cake, but it certainly is not mine. The cake held a lot of promise but just didn't win me over. Just as you can tell a good cake based on how quickly it goes, you can tell a bad one based on how much of it is left uneaten. In fact, I still have most of this cake sitting on my counter at time of writing.

I made this cake as a single layer in a 9x13 pan. Unlike the others, this cake uses water instead of milk, and vegetable oil in addition to the butter and eggs. Initially, I noticed some issues. It takes a lot of stirring to get all the lumps out of this mix. This could have been a bad box, but it definitely took longer than the others. Once baked, the cake puffed up nicely and looked promising.

The texture was fine — light and fluffy — but the flavor just wasn't there. This cake lacked a creaminess, and the chocolate felt like an afterthought. Then there was the frosting. The thick corn syrup filled chocolate frosting does at least cover a 9x13 cake, but that's about the only good thing you can say about it. Once again it was sweet and sticky, but there was no buttery flavor and the chocolate component just wasn't there.

Of the birthday-style cakes, this one was my favorite; it checks all the boxes. Nothing beats the cinnamon crumb cake for me, but this yellow cake is the perfect "I want cake" cake. The texture and crumb are similar to the chocolate cake. It is light and fluffy but with enough density to make the cake substantial and not overly airy. However, where the chocolate cake falls flat on flavor, this cake rose to the occasion. 

The yellow cake has a buttery and creamy flavor that is lacking in the chocolate variety. This really helps the yellow cake shine. There is a subtle hint of vanilla, although not a very strong one. In short, this is exactly what I think of when I think of a classic yellow cake. 

I chose to pair this cake with the Dolly Parton creamy buttercream-flavored frosting, which was again the low point. If you have the time and ability, making a simple American buttercream frosting for this cake would bring it up a notch.

When you stumble out of bed and tumble to the kitchen to pour yourself a cup of ambition, sometimes you don't get enough of that ambition to want to make pancakes from scratch — and that's okay. For your other needs, you have Dolly Parton's pancake mix. These are buttermilk pancakes, which led me to think they would have a little more flavor than they actually did.

Don't get me wrong, as a just-add water pancake, they are perfectly acceptable. If I wanted pancakes in a pinch, I wouldn't hesitate to grab a box. That said, nothing was exciting about them. The pancakes are fluffy, but there isn't much flavor. A splash of vanilla, some chocolate chips or blueberries may be a good way to upgrade them. These are the kind of pancakes I would make for myself on a busy day, but probably not for brunch with friends.

Finally, I tried Dolly's holiday baking kit. Unlike the cakes, where you must buy the frosting separately, this kit includes everything. This has a cookie mix, some green frosting, and an assortment of holiday sprinkles as toppings. The kit also includes a booklet with fun baking variations, including cinnamon swirl cookies. I stuck with the Easy Prep Recipe, which just requires melted butter, an egg, and water.

The dough itself comes together quickly. It doesn't require any chilling and is ready to go from bowl to pan to oven, which I appreciated. I was a little disappointed to discover one box only makes 12 cookies. Typically I think of a batch of cookies as at least 24. You can make the cookies smaller and get up to 18, but they are already on the small side.

After rolling the dough into balls, baking them, and cooling them, I got to decorating. This would be a fun activity to do with kids as it is hard to mess up, and the box gives you roughly four times as many sprinkles as you actually need for the cookies.

The cookies taste pretty good. They are sweet with subtle hints of vanilla and lemon. The frosting isn't great, but it is perfectly acceptable for these cookies, and the sprinkles provide a nice touch. Similar to the pancakes, these are not cookies I would bring to a party, but they make a great holiday family baking activity.

To test all the Dolly Parton baking mixes, I used the same brands for all my ingredients. All the butter was the same, and all the milk and eggs came from the same package. Additionally, each mix was tested in its purest form. While Parton and Duncan Hines provide ample variations, for the fairest results, I chose to go with the basic recipes and instructions for each box. Finally, any box that was supposed to be paired with another product was paired with the appropriate branded material. This was mostly Dolly Parton Duncan Hines frosting.

Each recipe was tasted the day they were baked after being given an appropriate amount of time to cool.