Tomato Soup Cake

I read about Tomato Soup Cake awhile ago on the Tasty Kitchen website and filed it away in the “oh, isn’t that interesting” compartment of my brain. Well, this past weekend I happened to have two cans of tomato soup burning a hole in my kitchen cabinet and I remembered this cake. Always up for an interesting adventure in the kitchen I gave it a try.


That’s right…a cake made with tomato soup.





There isn’t a great deal to this cake other than the tomato soup, spices, sugar and a little flour. It is basically a matter of mixing all that up (in a specific order) with some other baking odds and ends and then throwing it in the oven. 





I made the cake batter (and a mess) without incident.  Did you know that when you mix tomato soup with baking soda it fizzes and sounds like Rice Krispies?  However, here is where things started to get interesting. The recipe “suggests” making the cake in a bundt pan, something I do not own. To be honest, I’ve never really thought I needed one and still don’t. Rather than deciding to make it like a normal sheet cake, which would have been the prudent thing to do in this situation, I decided to put it in a bread pan and make it like a loaf.  Really, what I was thinking was that the spices are similar to what you’d put in banana bread or zucchini bread and I wanted this to be a similar shape. It made sense in my head, I swear.


As a result of this decision, I knew I’d have to watch the cake carefully since the temperature and timing would be off. I started checking on it after about 35 minutes…still jiggly…45 minutes…still jiggly…55 minutes…not jiggly but the toothpick didn’t come out clean. Oh darn, I’m going to ruin this cake, aren’t I?!


And I did. Well, kinda.





I ended up turning down the heat in the end so that the cake would cook but wouldn’t burn.  The edges were starting to look dangerously blackened. Ever the resourceful baker that I am, I realized that all was not lost and since this was a cake it didn’t have to look pretty under the frosting, right?





That’s right. I performed emergency surgery and cut off the slightly burnt edges….





…and still ate them. Bonus. Yum!


The recipe called for a cream cheese frosting so I threw all the ingredients in the mixer and let it do all the work. Frosting to the rescue.





The cake has been transformed in to a perfectly lovely, unburned, un-surgically altered baked good with the help of the all-concealing powers of frosting.





This cake was fun to make (it fizzes!) and asking people to guess the “secret ingredient” makes it extra fun. The tomato soup taste doesn’t end up in the final product, which is really just a yummy red-orange spice cake. The frosting, well, I don’t like cream cheese frosting and I have no idea why I continue to make it but I do. I just eat around it!


I might try adding pecans or walnuts or even chocolate chips if I ever make the cake again.


My verdict on tomato soup cake: Yummy cake and loads of fun to make. Try it! You never know what’ll happen.