Miss Linda’s Tomato Soup Cake
Today we had Tomato Soup Cake for desert. Sounds kinda disgusting, doesn’t it? Well it’s not. It’s actually quite good. It made a perfect finale to the Stuffed Loin I cooked up for supper. http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/254172/stuffed-pork-loin
What makes this cake special is the effect it has on your company when you tell them you’ll be serving Tomato Soup Cake for desert. Just sit back and imagine the look on their faces. That alone makes this cake a winner—the fact that it tastes just like a Spice Cake is just a bonus.
Tomato Soup Cake has been around since the late 1920s, but nobody is sure just where it originated. The Campbell Soup Company states that 20% of all recipe requests that it receives every year are for this recipe. Personally, I had never heard of it before, but Miss Linda said it was a frequently served desert at her house while she was growing up in Calgary
.
Miss Linda made one cake, but we both felt it was too dry and heavy. So, after we ate that one, she altered the recipe slightly and baked cake #2. Much, much better. She did mention that the baking soda added to the soup for the first cake just didn’t react properly. So, after picking up a fresh box of baking soda, she got the proper fizzy reaction that is absolutely necessary to make this cake kinda in the medium range—not light and airy but definitely not heavy.
Tomato Soup Cake Recipe:
1/3 cup Butter
1 cup White Sugar
2 Eggs
1 ½ cups Flour
1 ½ tsp Baking Powder
¼ tsp Salt
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Allspice
1 tsp Nutmeg
½ tsp Ground Cloves
1 cup Raisins Rehydrated (optional)
½ cups Nuts (optional)
1 tsp Baking Soda (fresh—very important)
1 can Campbell’s Tomato Soup (no-name, etc. is just too runny)
¼ cup Water
Cream together butter, sugar, and eggs.
Mix together all the dry ingredients, except the baking soda.
Mix the dry ingredients into the butter mixture.
Put the tomato soup in a small bowl, add the water and mix well. Now add the baking soda and stir it into the soup, activating the baking soda. You NEED to see a reaction.
Add the soup mixture to the batter, stirring well.
Pour into an 8 inch cake pan (whatever shape you want) and bake at 350* for 50 to 60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean. Should you choose to make a double layer cake, simply split the cake mix between two 8 inch pans.
When cool, you can ice it or not, whichever you prefer. Miss Linda grew up eating it without icing, served with butter. Since I have a fairly large sweet tooth, we iced ours with a plain white icing, but cream cheese icing is recommended by Campbell’s.
Cake batter all mixed up and in the pan:
Plain white icing. This is a really bad picture:
Plated and ready to eat:
So how was it? The first attempt, while good, was just too dry and heavy. Of course, that didn’t stop me from eating it. Cake #2, made with the fresh baking soda that activated properly, was perfect. While not a light cake by any stretch of imagination, it was a whole lot lighter than the first cake—the texture was just right. It was also nice and moist.
All in all, it was delicious. We’ll be making this one again, and the next time around, we’ll try the cream cheese icing.
We’re having friends over for coffee Sunday afternoon, and we’re really looking forward to telling them we’re having Tomato Soup Cake. I’m thinking that should be good for a chuckle or two.
Thanks for looking.
Gary
Today we had Tomato Soup Cake for desert. Sounds kinda disgusting, doesn’t it? Well it’s not. It’s actually quite good. It made a perfect finale to the Stuffed Loin I cooked up for supper. http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/254172/stuffed-pork-loin
What makes this cake special is the effect it has on your company when you tell them you’ll be serving Tomato Soup Cake for desert. Just sit back and imagine the look on their faces. That alone makes this cake a winner—the fact that it tastes just like a Spice Cake is just a bonus.
Tomato Soup Cake has been around since the late 1920s, but nobody is sure just where it originated. The Campbell Soup Company states that 20% of all recipe requests that it receives every year are for this recipe. Personally, I had never heard of it before, but Miss Linda said it was a frequently served desert at her house while she was growing up in Calgary
.
Miss Linda made one cake, but we both felt it was too dry and heavy. So, after we ate that one, she altered the recipe slightly and baked cake #2. Much, much better. She did mention that the baking soda added to the soup for the first cake just didn’t react properly. So, after picking up a fresh box of baking soda, she got the proper fizzy reaction that is absolutely necessary to make this cake kinda in the medium range—not light and airy but definitely not heavy.
Tomato Soup Cake Recipe:
1/3 cup Butter
1 cup White Sugar
2 Eggs
1 ½ cups Flour
1 ½ tsp Baking Powder
¼ tsp Salt
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Allspice
1 tsp Nutmeg
½ tsp Ground Cloves
1 cup Raisins Rehydrated (optional)
½ cups Nuts (optional)
1 tsp Baking Soda (fresh—very important)
1 can Campbell’s Tomato Soup (no-name, etc. is just too runny)
¼ cup Water
Cream together butter, sugar, and eggs.
Mix together all the dry ingredients, except the baking soda.
Mix the dry ingredients into the butter mixture.
Put the tomato soup in a small bowl, add the water and mix well. Now add the baking soda and stir it into the soup, activating the baking soda. You NEED to see a reaction.
Add the soup mixture to the batter, stirring well.
Pour into an 8 inch cake pan (whatever shape you want) and bake at 350* for 50 to 60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean. Should you choose to make a double layer cake, simply split the cake mix between two 8 inch pans.
When cool, you can ice it or not, whichever you prefer. Miss Linda grew up eating it without icing, served with butter. Since I have a fairly large sweet tooth, we iced ours with a plain white icing, but cream cheese icing is recommended by Campbell’s.
Cake batter all mixed up and in the pan:
Plain white icing. This is a really bad picture:
Plated and ready to eat:
So how was it? The first attempt, while good, was just too dry and heavy. Of course, that didn’t stop me from eating it. Cake #2, made with the fresh baking soda that activated properly, was perfect. While not a light cake by any stretch of imagination, it was a whole lot lighter than the first cake—the texture was just right. It was also nice and moist.
All in all, it was delicious. We’ll be making this one again, and the next time around, we’ll try the cream cheese icing.
We’re having friends over for coffee Sunday afternoon, and we’re really looking forward to telling them we’re having Tomato Soup Cake. I’m thinking that should be good for a chuckle or two.
Thanks for looking.
Gary
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