Stop 18: Georgia Coca-Cola Cake

Whenever I think of Georgia, I automatically think of the opening theme song to Designing Women.  I believe that Designing Women might be one of the best sitcoms ever aired on television.  I wept when Dixie Carter died and I once saw Annie Potts on Broadway.  She was playing a Chinese woman and the whole thing was terribly inappropriate, but it satisfied a long-unknown dream of seeing one of the women from Designing Women in person.  Magical, it was.

I digress.  Whenever I think of Georgia, I automatically think of Designing Women first, and then of Coca-Cola second.  Atlanta and Coke have been synonymous forever.  Especially since the Braves got over being the best thing in baseball.  It seems that Warren Brown also thought of Coca-Cola when thinking about Atlanta because that is the cake he allotted to Georgia.  No peach pie, no sweet tea trifle, nope, just a good, old-fashion Coca-Cola Cake.  And it turns out that the Coke cake is pretty old fashioned.  People have been experimenting with with Coke in recipes, both sweet and savory, pretty much since the stuff was bottled and available in the home.  Brown references a recipe to Coca-Cola chicken wings that I think sound delicious and might just have to try sometime (depending on how much frying is involved, me being me and all...).

The Coca-Cola cake was pretty standard, flour, butter, sugar, cocoa powder, etc.  It also called for mini marshmallows, which meant it was hellish to tell when it was cooked through (though, this might also have had something to do with my oven shutting off three times during the baking process).  (I hate my oven.)  Instead of any sort of leavening powder or the whatnot, the recipe called for a cup of good, old fashioned Coca-Cola.  That left me with 12 oz in the bottle, which I gave to a very confused co-worker on Monday morning.

As I mentioned above, the marshmallows and stupidity of the oven made it slightly difficult to tell when the cake was baked and I wasn't overwhelmed with the texture when it did come out.  I can't blame the recipe as much as the circumstance in this area though.  That being said, the icing was incredible.  And this is from a girl who doesn't like icing.  It was an Old-Fashioned Chocolate Buttercream and I swear, it was amazing.  Or at least, the two bites I had were.

As for the reception.  It went over quite well at the potluck.  One dinner attendent said that she liked it and could really tast the Coke in it.  The others then spent some time convincing her that she couldn't really taste the Coke in it at all, and then we progressed to a conversation about whether or not Victorian women talked about sex while needlepointing the day away.  We left split on that.

Next Stop: Alabama Lane Cake.  I want to make the Lane Cake before all the students are done reading To Kill a Mockingbird, since it's referenced in there.  But, since the reference is to how much liquor is in it, I will not be bringing this one to work...