Cocoa Cola Cake

Cocoa cola cake? As in Cola flavored cake? Coke Cake?

Maybe you're intrigued with the name of the cake and are mentally asking those questions, or maybe you are not. I sure was! I came across this cake in some book at some point. It caught my interest and I had made a note to look in to this cake at some point. That "some point" came in the guise of a friend's birthday gathering last month. I offered to bake the cake, and while pondering on what to explore this time, I remembered this cake.

This cake is popular in the south (southern United States). Much to my surprise and mild disappointment, the cake doesn't taste like coke (despite the claims made by some recipes) nor is it cola flavored. That said, this is one delish cake. It is extremely moist and soft - the moistest cake I have ever baked, and extremely fluffy, light and tender, thanks to the carbonated cola that does all the leavening action. Although the cake doesn't taste like cola, it tastes good and sort of unique. Despite the addition of cocoa, it is not chocolatey. It has a subtle caramel and cocoa flavor.

Everyone at the party loved this cake so much that they demanded that I re-bake the same cake for our New Years' party. I didn't expect it to be that popular! I wanted to tweak the recipe to infuse some cola flavor, but nobody wanted me to mess with the recipe - they all wanted the exact same cake! So no experimentation for a while... wonder what occasion I can concoct to bake a revised version of this cake - I have some ideas to make it taste coke-like, but let me not confidently divulge it before experimenting! If you have any suggestions, please share!

As is my obsession, I browsed through tonnes of recipes for coco(a) cola cakes and I realized that they are all pretty much the same... same set of ingredients and quantities except for a couple of deviations in the procedure. So, I eventually settled on this recipe because it promises that the cake would taste Coke-like. But it does not :( 

Thoughts on the recipe:

Note that the recipe calls for a lot of sugar. So I cut down the sugar to 1.5 cups (from 2 cups) to prepare the cake. I also used regular Coke, not diet Coke.

Also, while everyone loved the cake, I was not a fan of the frosting - it was again way too sweet for my liking. However, most people loved the frosting as well, so it's a matter of personal preference.

Personally, I would halve the frosting recipe or cut down the sugar to probably half the amount. It might throw off the consistency of the frosting, so this is one other place where some experimentation is required. I also cut down on the cocoa added to the frosting (I added just 1 tablespoon), because I desperately wanted the Coke flavor to come through. Didn't help, though.

And a final note on the recipe - the only difference between this recipe and most other recipes is how the Coke is treated. This recipe calls for heating/boiling the Coke with butter and cocoa, for both the cake batter and frosting. Not sure why it has to be heated... maybe it helps make the cake more moist, but I suspect it also interferes with imparting the cola flavor... how I wish I could spend a day just experimenting on all the different variables!

Anyway, all that analysis later, here's how the cake looks!

Tada!

Fresh from the oven with the marshmallows poking out

with the sweet and warm frosting