Tomato Cake

Posted by

David MacKinnon

I will start by saying that after decades of baking, I should know that a recipe that calls for 4 cups of flour is going to be big. I’ve reduced that to enough for one cake for this post.

While my spouse and I were watching the Great Canadian Baking Show, a question came to mind about whether tomatoes could be used to make a cake. The answer, it turned out, was yes. And it tastes remarkably like carrot cake but with more umami.

In the interest of brevity, because I personally hate the long life-story intros, let’s get straight to the recipe.

Print Recipe

Chocolate Tomato Cake

A sweet, moist chocolate cake with the umami hit of tomato without the tomato taste.

Prep Time30 minutes mins

Cook Time45 minutes mins

Total Time1 hour hr 15 minutes mins

Course:Dessert

Cuisine:American

Diet:Vegetarian

Keyword:baking, cake, chocolate, dessert, tomato

Servings:4 people

Author:David MacKinnon

Equipment

• 1 food processor
• 1 large mixing bowl
• 1 set of measuring cups
• 1 set of measuring spoons
• 1 mixing spoon
• 1 baking pan
• 1 kitchen scale

Ingredients

Wet Ingredients

• 350 grams ripe tomatoes (The more ripe the tomatoes the better. This should yield about 1 and 1/3 C tomato puree.)
• 2 medium eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp molasses
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil

Dry Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1.5 tsp ground nutmeg
• 3/4 tsp ground ginger

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C).
• Line a baking pan with parchment paper and grease it. For silicon pans you can skip this step.

Using food processor

• Wash and de-stem the tomatoes. Add them to the food processor and puree until smooth.
• Add eggs, sugar, molasses, and oil to the food processor and mix thoroughly.

Using mixing bowl

• In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. Mix well.
• Pour the wet ingredients from the food processor into the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Baking

• Pour into the baking pan, smooth the surface.
• Bake for 35-45 minutes or until a long toothpick comes out clean. If using silicon pans, expect to add 5 to 10 minutes to your cooking time.

Notes

The original recipe recommends a glaze, but you could also make a cream cheese icing or drizzle. I found it is just fine to eat on its own, but we also enjoyed it with a maple-buttercream icing.

I’ve minimized the amount of salt and baking soda achieve a tender cake while minimizing the sodium levels, but this is not a low-sodium recipe. Salt binds to flour proteins to create a more elastic dough so it can’t be eliminated entirely, and baking soda is needed to give the cake some lift. This still means the cake has 1,260 mg of sodium from the baking soda and 600 mg more from the salt for a total of just under 1900 mg plus a bit from the other ingredients, such as the molasses (about 15 mg).

If you are on a low-sodium diet, adjust your consumption accordingly.