Diet Soda Cakes

[tiggr33]

I just can't believe how good these turn out. Does anyone else make them?
This week I did Devils food with Diet Cherry Vanilla Coke. I also did a lemon cake with diet sierra mist. For those that aren't familiar with these cakes, you take your favorite box mix. If it calls for eggs, use only the whites. If it calls for water and or oil, do not use them, but use the same volume of diet soda in place of the water and oil. The cakes I have made have been so moist.

 

[mikki'smom]

I just made the lemon/ sierra mist cake and it was fabulous. What other combinations have you tried?

 

[tiggr33]

I've made quite a few, the ones that stick out off the top of my mind are:
Spice cake and diet ginger ale
carrot cake and diet sunkist
Red velvet with Diet Cherry Coke

I also make boxed brownies with the same soda princable. And I also have a Black Forest with Cherries recipe if interested.

 

[buckeye]

Does it have to be diet soda? Can you use regular soda, or is the point to have less sugar? I'd like to try one, but I don't really like to use nutrsasweet or whatever is in diet soda. What do you think?
Thanks!

 

[tiggr33]

I make them with diet to cut down on sugars, as I am hypoglycemic, and to cut down the fat (omitting oil). I woud assume they would work with regular soda, but they may turn out too sweet with the added sugar. I really dont know.

 

[cryssi]

whaa??

hmm...

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...
...

I have boxes of cake mix...yellow, butter golden, lemon, devil's food, red velvet...

soda: diet cherry coke, diet coke with lime, fresca, vault (the diet one), diet 7up...

what would be best? I could whip one of those up tonight...hmm...

 

[tiggr33]

Ohh I love fresca......pick that.... pick that .....I'd match it with the yellow or lemon mix.

Or the devils food with the diet cherry coke.......

 

[cryssi]

can you really taste the soda, though?? just wondering! lol

 

[tiggr33]

Some combinations I can taste, but just barely mostly, and I have a sensitive palate. It really all depends on the combination you pick. You'd notice cola flavor in a lemon cake for example. If you use like flavors, no-one will ever be the wiser that it is a "healthier" cake.

 

[cryssi]

"healthier" hmm...?? does that mean that if I make cupcakes and eat 6 in one sitting, it's ok? lol!

 

[buckeye]

OK---Sorry----I didn't really get that the point was for a healthier cake. Duh. I think all the snow has given me brain-freeze.

 

[tiggr33]

It is a lower sugar/lower fat alternative. But you'll never know it by the taste. A friend on WW's told me about it. It fits great into my hypoglycemic diet. I just cut back on carbs elsewhere in the day. That way I can have my cake and eat it too!

 

[MazdaUK]

Doesn't the soda (diet or not) make it sweeter than oil/water anyway? I often find packet cakes too sweet (especially the ones with filling/frosting). I suppose I could use tonic or bitter lemon

 

[tiggr33]

I do not find diet soda makes it sweet at all. I suppose it might if you were to use Coke Zero. But IMHO, regular or flavored diet coke/pepsi isn't sweet to begin with. Using tonic or bitters, you might impart the quinine or bitter flavor. I for one enjoy the taste of tonic water, and drink it quite regularly, but I am not sure how it would pair with a chocolate cake mix. I'd go a lemon, yellow mix.

 

[tiggr33]

MazdaUk, one other thought. I didn't notice this when I originally relpied to you. I now notice you are from the UK. You might be right about the sweetness. When I was in Ireland and Northern Ireland earlier this year, I did notice that diet soda tasted sweeter then it does in the US. Try diluting the soda a little with water, or tonic/bitters.

 

[bclydia]

One thing to consider is that artificial sweeteners like Aspartame, do not keep their sweetness when exposed to heat. So, they shouldn't add to the sweetness of the cake.

 

[Imzadi]

MazdaUk, one other thought. I didn't notice this when I originally relpied to you. I now notice you are from the UK. You might be right about the sweetness. When I was in Ireland and Northern Ireland earlier this year, I did notice that diet soda tasted sweeter then it does in the US. Try diluting the soda a little with water, or tonic/bitters.

It's the action of the bubbling that you want more than the flavors. Just use club soda / seltzer water / sparking water instead of the tonic or quinine.

FYI: A can of (regular, not diet) soda has an average of 8-15 teaspoons of sugar. Do you really want to be adding that into a cake mix? Stick to the diet soda if you don't want to try the seltzer.

 

[MazdaUK]

Fizzy water should work great! I'm confused about aspartame not keeping its sweetness, as I sometimes buy Splenda or similar sugar substitute for desserts.

 

[Imzadi]

Fizzy water should work great! I'm confused about aspartame not keeping its sweetness, as I sometimes buy Splenda or similar sugar substitute for desserts.

Splenda is not made from aspartame. It is some other sweetener that you CAN bake with. Aspartame/ Nutrasweet - or the stuff in the blue packets, was invented before Splenda. One of its problems is that the sweet taste disappears when heated at too high a temperture for it.

When I have my coffee, since I gave up having milk & now use powdered creamer, the coffee is actually too hot when I add in the aspartame. I actually have to add in a couple of table spoons of cold water, (like I would the milk,) to cool it enough that the aspartame flavor doesn't disappear after a couple of minutes being in the coffee.

When Splenda (the yellow packets) first came out on the market here, they hyped it for two things: that you can bake with it, and that it was actually made from a component found in sugar or fruit.

Our governmental Food & Drug Administration put a stop to the advertizing of it being made from sugar as in a teaspoon size portion: maybe one speck of sand's worth is actually made from sugar. It is essentially a chemical sweetener after all, and in the future may be found not to be that healthy after all.

 

[MazdaUK]

I used to work for our Food Advisory Committee in the UK (now replaced by Food Stndards Agency) and since then I've cut right back on sweeteners - teeth you can clean.....