Make Easy Soda Cake with Only 2 Ingredients | The Cake Mix Hack | (2024)

Make an easy and delicious cake with just two ingredients and five minutes of hands-on prep! Try this fun soda cake trick with a boxed cake mix and your favorite soft drink for an impressive dessert with tons of variations.

Ingredients

• cake mix, gluten free if you like
• soft drink, to match cake

That’s all I need for Soda Cake?

There is so much variation possible with this cake.

Use a regular box of cake mix, and it won’t be gluten-free.

Use a gluten-free mix and … well, there you go.

The ingredients in this are so simple. Once again, we’re turning to a store-bought mix. They are so often on sale and if you have a reputation for baking, somehow they get dropped off.

Or is just me who gets everyone else’s random “I figure you can use this” groceries?

For whatever the reason, I often end up with store-bought mixes, either because someone was cleaning out the pantry, or I saw them for less than a dollar. (I can’t buy that much flour for a dollar, so it seems like a good deal to me)

At any rate, use whatever mix you have for this ‘almost scratch’ soda cake recipe, and match it with a complementary soft drink. It doesn’t even have to be sweetened soda. Your favorite sparkling water will work, too.

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Counting calories? Use unsweetened sparkling water and a sugar-free cake mix! Pillsbury has a zero calorie cake mix that’s just 120 calories and 2g fat when cut in 12 pieces.

Vanilla cake mix or white cake mix with orange crush – you’ll get an orange creamsicle cake

Vanilla with grape soda = purple cow

Chocolate cake mix or devil’s food cake with cherry cola – sort of a Black Forest thing going there. Use diet cherry cola and call it a “sinless devil’s food”.

Or chocolate with regular cola – give that chocolate a kick

Lemon cake mix or any classic yellow cake mix with a lemon-lime soda (like Sprite) – lemony goodness

Vanilla cake with root beer – definitely one of my favorites

Or vanilla cake with strawberry soda – strawberry cake

Chocolate cake with root beer – root beer float

Spice cake with ginger ale – ginger + spice = gingerbread? Sort of. Tastes great, anyway.

And don’t waste the expensive soft drinks on this. Use that no-name, inexpensive brand. Don’t worry, it will still totally impress everyone.

You might call that soda or pop or soda pop or even co*ke. Around here, we tend to call it pop, which is what it was called since 1812. According the poet Robert Southey, it is:

called pop because pop goes the cork when it is drawn, & pop you would go off too if you drank too much of it

Robert Southey

That’s at least EIGHT different variations, from a cream soda cake to a black forest cake, all with three ingredients and five minutes of hands-on prep.

The directions are simplicity itself. Put cake mix, soda, and eggs into a large mixing bowl and mix with a spatula or wooden spoon. The carbonation will do a lot of the mixing for you. You can probably mix it in your stand mixer with the paddle attachment on low speed, just until combined. Either way, don’t OVER mix or you’ll beat out the carbonation.

I used an 8×8-inch baking dish. Grease or coat it with cooking spray, add the cake batter, and pop it into oven for 30-35 minutes.

Like most cake recipes, you can also use it to make cupcakes. Cupcakes take about half the time, so check them at 15 minutes. If they don’t test clean with a toothpick, bake for another 5 minutes.

A 9-inch round cake pan has the same area (64 square inches) as an 8×8-inch square so you can use either one.

Dust the cake with a bit of powdered sugar or frost the cake with any frosting that goes well with your flavors.

Ok, but WHY can we use soda instead of eggs?

In this recipe, the carbonated soda is used as a leavening agent to help the cake rise, instead of relying on the eggs. The carbonation in the soda causes bubbles to form in the batter, which helps the cake to rise without the need for eggs.

Some people believe that the acids in the soda can help to mimic the binding and emulsifying properties of eggs, which can help to keep the cake moist and tender.

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