When I was a kid I was a pop* addict – Coke, Mountain Dew, Sprite – anything I could get my hands on. Sometimes my Mom brought home a magical case from the grocery store which had six cans each of Orange Crush (my LOVE), Grape Crush, Cream Soda and Root Beer. Over time, this morphed into a Diet Pepsi addiction, which I eventually gave up cold turkey in 2010 and never looked back. I’m now fairly obsessed with La Croix and all other types of sparkling water, but at least I’ve given up the sugar, right?

All this to say that even though I haven’t had Diet Pepsi in ten years, or any other pop for way longer than that, I was super excited to make this week’s Baked Sunday Morning recipe: Root Beer Bundt Cake. I picked up a small bottle of A&W Root Beer from the convenience store near my office and when I got ready to bake, I cracked it open and inhaled deeply. It smelled like my childhood! I took a few cold sips and it was SO sweet; how did I ever pound back cans of this as a little kid?!

This cake was pretty quick and easy to mix up with just a whisk and some muscle. Two whole cups of root beer go into the cake, and 1/4 cup goes into the frosting. I have to say, this cake is super satisfying (the frosting is particularly delicious), but I couldn’t taste the root beer AT ALL. This is one of my baking pet peeves; when a recipe has a special ingredient you have to go out and procure that doesn’t end up making one bit of difference. I’m sure I could have used buttermilk or even water in this and it would have tasted the same (or better).

In any case, I thought it would be a fun game to test my co-workers to see if they could figure out what was in this cake. I put it out in our snack station and let everyone know it had a secret ingredient and they had to guess what it was (it reminded me of the same game I played with these cupcakes way back in 2013). I was forced to give the following hints: the secret ingredient was wet, not dry; I didn’t have it my kitchen, I had to go out and buy it; it wasn’t a fruit or vegetable. It was actually hilarious how into it everyone got, and some could legit not concentrate until they knew what it was. The closest guess I had was Coke; but others were applesauce, black beans, chickpeas, tahini, chili powder, weed (LOL), magic mushrooms (LOLOL). They were all shocked when I made the big reveal and asked when we could play this game again!

*In Canada, we call it pop; you may know it as soda!

You can find the recipe here!

More Baked Sunday Mornings here!