Yes, you read that right — tomato soup cake is indeed a thing, albeit a slightly outdated and rather odd one. I first came across the sheer notion of a tomato soup cake by way of this Reddit post, which includes images from a decades-old Campbell's soup cookbook. The cookbook highlights some more normal soup-inspired dishes, like casseroles and stews, but it also includes desserts ranging from old-fashioned gingerbread cake, a quick tomato spice cake, and of course, tomato soup cake.
Once I got past the sheer shock factor at the thought of infusing canned tomato soup into a cake, I couldn't deny that I was at least a bit intrigued. As someone who bakes regularly, I'm always up for trying new tricks and recipes, even those that seem a bit outlandish. The end result was supposedly meant to taste something like a spice cake, and as such, the cookbook calls for topping off the cake with cream cheese frosting (and can anything slathered in cream cheese frosting really be all that terrible?).
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What Is Tomato Soup Cake?
Tomato soup cake is one of those food inventions that likely cropped up more so out of necessity than anything else. According to Campbell's, the first iteration of a tomato soup spice cake recipe would have been published sometime around the 1920s or 1930s, making it a Depression-era dessert that put an inexpensive, easy-to-source ingredient (canned tomato soup) to good use.
Courtesy Julia Duda
The recipe I'm following here comes from a Campbell's cookbook that was published in 1976, so it definitely has a retro feel to it. Unlike some other recipes out there, this one calls for making the cake from-scratch (so no box mixes here), though it is ultimately still a very easy recipe and, of course, features canned tomato soup as the star of the show.
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What Does Tomato Soup Do to This Cake?
Courtesy Julia Duda
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Ingredients Needed for Tomato Soup Cake
As I've already mentioned, you really don't need a whole lot of specialty ingredients to make tomato soup cake magic happen. To start, there's the cake essentials: flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, eggs and a bit of water. Shortening was a bit of a unique inclusion here (as opposed to something like butter or vegetable oil), but it was an easy ingredient to find in the baking aisle at the grocery store. Since this is a spice cake, you'll also need cinnamon, allspice and cloves. Finally, you'll just need a can of Campbell's condensed tomato soup (it doesn't strictly have to be Campbell's brand, but considering that this recipe came from a Campbell's cookbook, it only makes sense!)
Courtesy Julia Duda
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How To Make Tomato Soup Cake
Before we get to any mixing or tomato soup-pouring, it all starts with the prep work. First, preheat the oven to 350°F and grease and flour your baking pans. The recipe provides options for the types of pans you can use, but I opted for two 9-inch round pans so I could layer my cake (8-inch pans or a rectangular pan would also work).
Courtesy Jula
Next, as with many cake recipes out there, move onto the dry ingredients. In a bowl, add your measured flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, allspice, cinnamon and cloves. Whisk to combine these ingredients.
Courtesy Julia Duda
Then, in a sort of unusual move, you'll add wet ingredients straight to the bowl with the flour mixture, starting with the soup and shortening. Many recipes call for preparing wet ingredients separately and then combining wet and dry right before baking, but I sort of appreciated the simplified one bowl-approach that this recipe took.
Courtesy Julia Duda
Next, either mix or beat the shortening and soup into the flour mixture. The instructions in the cookbook call for an oddly specific "300 strokes with a spoon" if you're going the manual route, but I just opted to use an electric hand mixer to make things a little easier.
Courtesy Julia Duda
Once the soup and shortening are fully incorporated, there are only two ingredients left, the eggs and water. Add those right in, mix (or beat) a little more, and voila: tomato soup cake batter.
Courtesy Julia Duda
Now that you've got something resembling cake batter, transfer the batter to your prepared pan(s). I went ahead and weighed my batter in the pans so I knew there was an even amount in both, but of course, this is a completely optional thing to do. Also optional, but I smoothed out the batter atop each cake so that everything would bake up nice and evenly.
Courtesy Julia Duda
Courtesy Julia Duda
Into the oven the cakes go, and how long you bake depends on the size of pan(s) you ended up using. The cookbook itself calls for 35 to 40 minutes, so that's what I went with, setting a timer for 35 minutes.
Courtesy Julia Duda
Once the 35 minutes were up, I used a toothpick to check the doneness in the center of the cakes. I decided to bake them for 2 minutes more, just to ensure that there was no wetness left in the middle.
Courtesy Julia Duda
After the cakes were done baking, I let them sit in the pans for 10 minutes, per the cookbook. After that, I removed the cakes from the pans, allowing them to fully cool on wire racks.
Courtesy Julia
Now comes the fun part: frosting the cakes. Like I said, I opted to use a tub of store-bought cream cheese frosting for convenience, but homemade cream cheese frosting would be just as good (if not even better). You can frost your cakes however you want, but to start, I placed one cake layer on a board and frosted the top of it.
Courtesy Julia Duda
Then, I put the other cake layer on top, trying to line them up as evenly as possible.
Courtesy Julia Duda
With the other cake layer stacked, all that was left to do was frost the top of that as well. I decided not to frost the sides of my cake so I could actually see the cake itself, and because I thought it'd ultimately give my the best cake-to-frosting ratio. Of course, if you recreate this cake at home, feel free to frost those sides to your heart's content.
Courtesy Julia Duda
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Tomato Soup Cake: My Honest Thoughts
For starters, I really can't get over how easy this cake was to make. To be fair, most cake recipes out there aren't exactly super difficult to make, but this one required very basic ingredients and a single bowl for mixing everything up. It really doesn't get much easier than that, so I was already pleased with this recipe based on ease alone.
Courtesy Julia Duda
The texture of the cake is also worth highlighting. I do think that the tomato soup really helped the cake retain lots of moisture, and I enjoyed how tender my slice of cake was. I also think the shortening helped establish lots of moisture in the cake, and though I can't say if you'd get the same results by using butter or oil instead, I do think the shortening is absolutely worth opting for.
Courtesy Julia Duda
Tips, Tricks and Advice for Making Tomato Soup Cake
Although this is a very simple and straightforward recipe, there are a few tips and tricks to keep in mind should you make a tomato soup cake for yourself.
Also, I'd recommend adding a little salt to your cake batter. The recipe doesn't call for doing so, but I do think that even a pinch of salt would help all of the flavors pop that much more.
2. Use homemade cream cheese frosting
When it comes to storing tomato soup cake, I opted to keep mine at room temperature inside of an airtight cake carrier. The cake was just as good (if not better, but more on that in a moment) the next day, and it was still pretty good by day three as well. I tossed the rest of it by day four, not because it was necessarily bad, but because it was a bit past its prime. The cake wasn't nearly as tender and was starting to taste a bit dry by that point.
4. Enjoy a slice on day two
Some online tomato soup cake enjoyers claim that the cake tastes even better the day after it's baked. I could see this being the case even before I tried it myself, as many foods do indeed taste better after all of the ingredients and flavors have had time to meld and get acquainted. And, after enjoying a second slice on day two, I can attest to the fact that the cake at the very least tastes just as good, if not even better with a slightly more pronounced spiced flavor profile.
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