This cake recipe was submitted to Tasty Kitchen by Tanya Hollas, and the second I saw it I knew I wanted to give it a try someday.

I mean…cake? With tomato soup? How delightfully different and rebellious.

Here’s how it went down.

Here’s what you need: Tomato Soup (yes, you heard me), flour, sugar, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, baking soda, and golden raisins (optional!)

First thing you need to do is dump the tomato soup into a bowl. The world’s gone crazy!

Add the baking soda to the tomato soup…

And stir it to combine. It almost becomes foamy right off the bat because of the acid/baking soda mix!

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the butter and sugar. There’s really not much butter in this cake, so it won’t be an overly creamy combination at this point.

Dump in the tomato soup/baking soda mixture…

And mix it together, which results in a really freaky-looking mixture.

Next, dump in the flour…

And mix it until just combined.

I took the liberty of adding in a cup of golden raisins. I thought it was the right thing to do.

Mix it together until the raisins are evenly distributed…and that’s it! This is a really simple cake—no eggs, very little butter.

Thoroughly grease a bundt pan. I sprayed the heck out of mine with baking spray—there’s nothing worse than having a cake partially stick to the pan.

Pour the batter into the bundt pan—it’s a little thick, so you’ll have to spoon it in.

Use a spoon or flat spatula to even out the surface, then pop it in the oven for 45 to 55 minutes, or until no longer jiggly.

Pouf! There ’tis!

Isn’t the color gorgeous?

Turn it onto a cake plate or platter and let it cool completely before icing.

And speaking of icing…

I made my own, but there’s also a cream cheese icing recipe included with the tomato cake recipe. You can’t go wrong—just mix cream cheese and powdered sugar in a bowl and good things will happen.

I did a package of cream cheese, half a stick of butter, and about a pound and a half of powdered sugar.

Mix it all together until it’s creamy and smooth.

Heap the icing on top of the cooled cake…

Smear and swipe and smooth until the cake is evenly covered.

Then cut right into it. No one’s watching!

Confession: my cake was still a tad warm when I iced it.

But when it comes to baked goods, I have a problem with patience.

Is this not gorgeous?

Is this not lovely?

Is this not tempting? Yum.

 
VERDICT: As I suspected it would be, the cake was really delicious. While you can still detect the tomato soup scent in the batter, once the cake is baked the tomato qualities are replaced by the spices…and it really does wind up as a richly colored spice cake. If you’re sensitive to the spices in the cake, you could easily pull back just a bit on quantities—particularly on the ground cloves—as the flavor really was powerful and strong! I loved everything about it, though, and thought the cream cheese icing was the perfect balance. Note that this cake does not contain eggs—perfect for egg-sensitive human-types.

Try it sometime soon—and this is the key: don’t tell anyone what the ingredients are until after they’ve tasted it.

That’s one of my favorite activities!

Here’s the printable recipe for the cake. Note that I substituted butter for Crisco; I think I might try shortening next time.

Tomato Soup Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Thank you, Tanya Hollas, for sharing!