tomato soup cake

[solarbird]

I made the tomato soup mystery cake from that cooking tiktok a couple of months ago...

It’s actually good. Absolutely recommended.

It’s kind of a cross between a brownie and gingerbread and a carrot cake and the recipe calls it “magic” and it kind of is because how the fuck do you get there from these ingredients I DON’T EVEN KNOW

...but you do.

I tracked down the version I’m pretty sure he was using and there’s this moment in the video as it's baking where he says it smells like... I forget but it was bad... and I had that happen too!

Turns out that’s how you know it’s almost but not quite done.

No really. It smells honestly pretty good for like the first 40 minutes in the oven and then the smell turns on you, right? And you’re all “oh gods what did I do.”

It’s some reaction happening, I have no idea what. But then the smell turns again and that’s when it passes the toothpick test. Then I let it go like five more minutes because it just felt like it needed it, and then I took it out and yum.

So yeah. If you've been thinking about making this? Give it a punt. It's awfully good. You might like it.

Comments

[gwydion]

fascinating

[solarbird]

I don't know what chemistry is going on here but it does involve a science-fair-volcano moment (adding the baking soda to the tomato soup while still in the can) so it's obviously going to pretty complex for otherwise-simple baking.

[kathmandu]

I still boggle at the very idea. How can tomato-soup-tasting "cake" taste good?

Did you use cream of tomato soup, or the all-vegetable kind of tomato soup?

[solarbird]

Campbell's condensed tomato, 1 can, straight from the can. Given the era of the recipe, I'm pretty sure that's what they meant.

And that's the magic part, right? It doesn't taste like tomato. It tastes kind of like the intersection of brownies, gingerbread, and carrot cake.

Plus you get science fair volcano action when you add the baking soda to the tomato soup while it's still in the can so while that's absolutely a valid shortcut I suggest doing it over the bowl. ^_^

[arethinn]

I've heard of using ketchup in cookies, but that's bizarre. And I'm boggling at the idea of adding more salt to anything that calls for a can of tomato soup, which is just about the saltiest thing there is.

[solarbird]

The butter is also salted, because they didn't say sweet butter, which they would've in the era if they meant unsalted. (Or so I have been lead to understand.)

It doesn't taste salty though. It is very dense - see the "brownie" part of the spectrum - but it didn't taste unduly salty.

[arethinn]

Salted butter is the default even now, at least in recipes directed to the average home cook.

Whatever it may taste like, I still don't want to contemplate the actual sodium content per serving! :)

[solarbird]

Well, it's got a good bit of salt, but it's not that bad.

I mean, yes, the whole can is a lot. I looked it up, and 10 fl. oz. includes 1025 mg of salt, or 42.5% of USRDA.

But that's one can divided across a 10-serving cake, by the recipe. So divide by ten, and that's 4.25% of your USRDA of salt per serving from the soup. That's not a lot.

There's a lot more salt from the quarter teaspoon you add, which is 1.5 grams, or 150mg more per serving. That's where your salt is here.

With them both, you have 150mg table salt+102.5mg tomato soup salt gives a combined 252.5mg, or a combined 10.5% USRDA per serving.

You could try it without any added salt at all and have a pretty reasonable salt-per-serving load, honestly. I don't know how it would taste, but there's certainly nothing wrong with trying.

[solarbird]

(Sorry about the edit, I've no idea where my maths went for a minute there.)

[corvi]

I think we made a tomato soup cake ("surprise cake") on my first day of sixth grade home ec class. It was chocolatey and contained lots of cocoa; I got the impression the tomato soup was mostly providing pudding-y texture.

[solarbird]

Neat!

Of course, there's no cocoa at all in this version, which is part of the mystery.