I turned 36 today and wanted to celebrate by baking something quirky.
When I was much, much younger, the ads for All Gold Tomato Sauce claimed there were 36 tomatoes crammed into each bottle of their sauces. I don’t know how true that is for their current product but I was going for a more nostalgic hat-tip. June 17th is also apparently Eat Your Veggies day and I thought it would be fun to include that in my cake somehow. Now I know tomato is a fruit and not a vegetable but it’s pretty close to it in the mindset of most people.
In my box of recipe clippings from old magazines, there’s a recipe for cake made with tomato soup. It promised that the taste of tomato was indiscernible and that what emerged from the oven would be a rich and spicy chocolate cake. I looked online for a recipe that used ketchup instead of tomato soup (I was really committed to my All Gold 36) and I found one that used Heinz Ketchup. I didn’t care much for how many tomatoes went into a bottle of Heinz, it was just the direction I needed to make this cake happen.
I adjusted the Heinz recipe to include cocoa powder and coffee for a chocolate cake and it worked perfectly.
My husband and friends couldn’t guess what the secret ingredient was. There was not a single hint of tomato, only rich and spicy chocolate ones as promised.
Tomato Sauce Chocolate Cake
Serves 12
- 300g flour
- 150g cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 1 teaspoon ground coffee
- 125ml All Gold Tomato Sauce
- 125ml water
- 2 tablespoons prepared coffee
- 175g Stork Bake, softened
- 350g dark brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Grease two 23 cm round cake tins and line the bottoms with baking parchment.
- Mix the dry ingredients into a bowl.
- Stir the tomato sauce, water and coffee together in a separate bowl. Set aside.
- Beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl until smooth.
- Beat in the eggs, one at a time.
- Add the flour mixture and tomato sauce mixture.
- Beat slowly, scraping down the bowl as needed, until the mixture is combined.
- Beat at high speed for 1 minute.
- Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cake tins.
- Bake for 25 minutes or until the centre springs back when touched lightly.
- Cool the cakes for 15 minutes before turning onto a rack to cool completely.
- I cut out rounds of cake to make these mini stacks.
- Frost with chocolate ganache or as desired.
i remember when I tried making true Red Velvet with beet Juice… It was worth it, just not so red. Mmm but some nice home-ground grains and I might shaft my attention to some new unique whole grain breads! There’s a great grain share in my area i’ve wanted to try out.
Please check the cocoa measure 150g is a lot of cocoa!
Hi Pam. It is a lot of cocoa, but that’s what this recipe calls for, it’s very chocolatey. You’re welcome to reduce the quantity to your taste, I don’t think it will affect the cake texture too much, it may even make it a bit more moist.