Coca-Cola Cake

When the first lady showed up at Crockett Point Baptist Church with a Coca-Cola cake, you would have thought that she’d invented homemade gold. Everyone had to have the recipe. In years to come, it morphed into 7-Up cake, Dr. Pepper cake, RC and Moon Pie cake, and Sun Drop cake. Basically, once someone introduced making cakes with soda pop, the experimenting and Christian-like competition began.

Cake

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups sugar

2 sticks butter

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup cola (never use diet soda)

1½ cups marshmallow crème

½ cup buttermilk

2 large eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Icing

1½ sticks butter

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

3 tablespoons cola (again, never diet soda)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup chopped pecans

1 cup flaked coconut

To make the cake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13 x 9-inch baking pan. In a large bowl sift together the flour and sugar. In a small saucepan heat the butter, cocoa, and cola just until the mixture boils. Add the marshmallow crème and stir until it’s melted into the chocolate. Pour this heated creamy mixture into the flour mixture and blend well. Add the buttermilk, eggs, baking soda, and vanilla and beat by hand for about 1 minute to incorporate air into the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared baking pan and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. This is a cake you frost hot, and it’s a leave-in-the-pan, take-to-church-supper kind of cake.

To make the icing, in a medium saucepan combine all the icing ingredients and bring to a boil. Remove the icing from the heat, poke holes over the entire surface of the hot cake with a toothpick, and frost the cake while both cake and icing are still warm. Allow the cake to cool in the pan.

Makes 10 to 12 servings