Every year (but one) for the past eight years, we’ve headed over to Kristen‘s house for the fourth. She throws a pretty swell party and it may be Noah’s number one favorite holiday (after Christmas). I’ve noticed that in the past few months he comes most alive with he’s with his friends. Sometimes when he’s stuck at home with us I can tell that he’s just counting the minutes until he can call, message or see his people.

I like to see him with his friends (it helps that I like his friends a lot) and I like to see him stretching his way past his insular family even though I’ll miss him when he’s well and truly gone. (I’m sure he’ll visit. Some.)

Anyway. I decided that in honor of the great American tradition of the suburban potluck I’d make a Pepsi Cake. I found the recipe in a cookbook we had at work (our organization does a whole lot with small Ohio towns and one of them put out a cookbook as a fundraiser). The Pepsi Cake was a hit although I couldn’t bring myself to eat a whole piece — too sweet! Mostly I just wanted to try it because it sounded hilarious only I wanted to make it with Coca-Cola since that seemed more patriotic. Brett doesn’t like Coke as much as Pepsi because he’s blasphemous but since he’d be the one drinking the left-overs, I let him make the final decision.

The result was a very very very moist cake with a tiny bit of a bite like the first burn when you sip soda. There wasn’t any left when we headed home so I guess folks liked it (I know my father-in-law did). Next time I’d like to try it with chocolate and maybe a cherry cola. Here’s the recipe:

1 box white cake mix (didn’t I tell you it’d be very American??)

4 eggs

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup Pepsi

Mix it all up and bake it according to the box instructions. I did it in a bundt pan but then had trouble getting it out because I need a new bundt pan. (Note: Some people add a package of vanilla pudding to this mix. And some people add nuts to the bottom of the pan.)

The topping is the kicker:

stick of butter (I use real butter even though this recipe really cries out for Oleo if you want to keep with the theme)

1/4 cup Pepsi

1/4 cup water

1 cup sugar

Stir it up on the stovetop and bring to a boil. Boil for 3 to 4 minutes then pour over the hot cake. It’ll all soak in (it may take some time so pour slowly) and you’ll end up with a very juicy cake.

Apparently cooking with soda pop is a time-honored American tradition and colas work especially well as a meat tenderizer. And when I was hunting around the internet, I also found a ton of people who make a “diet” cake by using a box of cake mix with a diet soda, no other ingredients. Stir it up and bake it. There are long bulletin board discussions about which flavors go with which flavors. Like lemon cake with diet 7-up or yellow cake with diet orange Faygo. I will leave you to that because I think this recipe is as far as I want to go down the soda pop baking path. (The diet soda cake doesn’t ring my bell AT ALL.)
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