Reflections on ... Tomato Soup Cake

Further adventures in baking: on Sunday the boys were coming round, so I whipped up Tomato Soup Cake from B Dylan Hollis’ essential Baking Yesteryear cookbook (“the best recipes from the 1900s to the 1980s”). I know it sounds odd, but tomato soup cake was a housewife’s staple in the 50s, 60s and 70s (I remember my mother making it when I was a kid), it’s an extremely user-friendly recipe (I’ve made it twice now) and you can’t actually taste the tomato soup (it tastes primarily of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves). This is the third recipe I’ve made from Baking Yesteryear (I’ve already done peanut butter bread and date and walnut loaf – both excellent) and can verify Hollis never steers you wrong. (He suggests icing it with cream cheese frosting. I cheated by buying a tub from the store). Recommended!

Watch B Dylan Hollis break it down here.

Reflections on ... Dolly Parton's Southern Style Banana Cake Mix

 

In 2022 the sugary high cholesterol collab of our dreams dropped when the Duncan Hines corporation and beloved Country & Western diva and bouffant wig enthusiast Dolly Parton joined forces for a limited-edition “Southern Style” range of cake mixes and frostings. And the kitschy retro pastel Barbie-like packaging was pure pop art! 

So, imagine how crushed I was when I couldn’t find any of these cake mixes at my local grocery stores in London. And I quickly discovered they were also seemingly impossible to order online outside of America. I sent a message to Duncan Hines via their Twitter account querying this, and a representative explained the licensing agreement exclusively covers the US, meaning no one outside of the country can buy Parton’s cake mixes. It was seemingly never meant to be … 

... until my sassy Ohio-residing British ex-pat friend Louise (“Weezie) came to the rescue! She sent me two packages of Parton’s banana-flavoured cake mixes and two tubs of her buttercream frosting as a Christmas gift. (I don’t even want to think how much the postage must have cost her). I was going to hang onto them for special occasions (plus I’m trying to shift some post-Christmas – hell, post-Covid lockdown – blubber). And then there were the legal concerns. Am I breaking the law? It felt illicit! This cake mix is not licensed for use in the UK! But I cracked and - donning my frilly pinafore - whipped-up one of the mixes yesterday. 

My verdict? Even though the box screamed “DO NOT EAT RAW BATTER” in bold and upper case, I sampled some of the batter and it gave instant promising hits of banana milkshake. My layers came out a bit asymmetrical and wonky, but the finished cake is sublime. It’s ultra-sweet and packed with that synthetic banana flavour which is Proustian for those of us who came of age in the seventies before people worried about E-numbers in food. Goddess Dolly never steers you wrong! In conclusion, to paraphrase Homer Simpson: “Mmmm – fattening!” Now I’m determined to get my hands on the coconut-flavoured version!