The Discontinued Pillsbury Cake Mix We're Never Getting Back

It's no surprise that Pillsbury products are a staple in the baking aisle, considering that the company has been around since 1869, and was the first to ever sell chocolate cake mix. Through the years, Pillsbury has released all kinds of cake mixes, and while many ended up becoming classics — like Funfetti, which was released in 1989 – some, such as the Perfectly Pumpkin Cake mix, are only available seasonally. There are also a number of other boxed cake flavors that are probably gone forever, including the Pink Lemonade Angel Food Cake mix.

Pillsbury introduced this sweet-tart cake mix in 1961 alongside a pink lemonade-flavored frosting mix. It was described in an advertisement (via Click Americana) as being "cool and tart with a refreshing taste" and perfect for a party. Pillsbury also released a Deluxe version of the cake mix, which could remain fresh and soft for up to three days before going stale. Though these pink lemonade-flavored baking mixes sounded promising, Pillsbury ultimately decided to stop selling them a long time ago. The only pink Pillsbury cake mix you'll see on shelves today is the strawberry one.

The most probable explanation for Pillsbury's discontinuation of its Pink Lemonade Angel Food Cake mix was that it was expensive to make. One of its biggest selling points was that it would produce cakes that, according to the advertisement (via Click Americana), were "extra high and light" because the mix contained 14.4 egg whites. Cake mixes typically require the customers to add their own eggs, so with Pillsbury supplying all 14.4 of them, it had to have been more expensive for the company to make compared to other cake mixes. If the product also had poor sales on top of this, Pillsbury would have plenty of incentive to discontinue the product.

It's also worth noting that fruit-laced angel food cake was one of the most popular desserts from the '50s, so, by 1961, when Pillsbury introduced its Pink Lemonade Angel Food Cake mix, it's possible that customers had simply lost interest in the baking trend by then. It's also possible that the company just decided to prioritize certain products over others. For example, in the '60s, Pillsbury started selling tubes of refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough, and those are still around.

Pillsbury never ended up bringing back the Pink Lemonade Angel Food Cake mix and probably never will. However, in spring 2013, the brand did release a similar Pink Lemonade Cake mix as part of a seasonal lineup that also included other citrus-flavored cake mixes like Orangesicle and Key Lime. There was also a pink lemonade frosting, much like the 1961 release, as well as a Pink Lemonade Cookie mix. Judging by the Amazon reviews, for several years, Pillsbury did continue to bring this cake mix back every spring, but the last time a customer was able to get a box seems to have been in 2017.

If Pillsbury decided to reintroduce pink lemonade-flavored baking mixes in the future, it most likely wouldn't be in the form of an angel food cake mix. There's definitely a reason the company decided against doing so in 2013 and went with cookie mix and regular cake mix instead. Pillsbury also doesn't even sell regular angel food cake mix anymore, so it's hard to imagine that a pink lemonade-flavored one would be in the cards.