Faith Hill's Coca-Cola Cake Is a Sweet Taste of the South

When country music star Faith Hill appeared on an episode of Ina Garten's show Be My Guest with Ina Garten earlier this year, she didn't just deliver a fun-filled interview; she headed to the kitchen to show us how to make one of her family's favorite recipes. Revealing that the Coca-Cola cake happens to be a favorite of her husband's (and it's even on Tim's list of things to receive for his birthday every year), Faith and her daughter Gracie give Ina the step-by-step instructions on how to give this dessert a try.

After seeing how delicious the cake turned out on screen, I knew it was something I had to give a try IRL. So, I checked the cabinets to see what I had, headed to the store to pick up what was left and got to work to test out this sweet treat.

Get the recipe: Faith Hill's Coca-Cola Cake

Ingredients for Faith Hill's Coca-Cola Cake

There’s a lot going into this cake, but it includes items that you probably already have on hand. The most special of the ingredients are marshmallows, buttermilk, and Coca-Cola (Faith and Ina use the glass bottles of Coke because they're fancy like that), but if you regularly have those things in the house, this cake will be a snap to throw together. The other stuff is your standard everyday cake ingredients — butter, sugar, baking soda, cocoa powder, vanilla extract, flour, eggs and confectioners' sugar.

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How to Make Faith Hill's Coca-Cola Cake

After preheating the oven to 350°F, spray and flour a 9 x 13 baking pan. Sift the flour and granulated sugar into a bowl and heat up the butter, cocoa powder and Coke to a boiling point in a small pan. Pour that over the dry ingredients. Then, add your buttermilk, baking soda, lightly beaten eggs, vanilla extract and mini marshmallows. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 30 to 35 minutes.

While the cake is baking, make the icing. Start by combining butter, cocoa powder, more Coke, a full 16-ounce bag of confectioners' sugar and a bit of vanilla extract in a pan, then heating it to a boil. When the cake comes out of the oven, poke holes in it with a chopstick and pour the icing over the cake. Serve the cake warm.

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What I Thought of Faith Hill's Coca-Cola Cake

Although using soda as a cooking ingredient was nothing new to me (Dr. Pepper cake and cola-braised short ribs — among other soda-forward recipes — have appeared on my FYP lately), I was a tad disappointed in this cake overall, and I really didn't want to be. After all, anything that Ina (a queen in my book) makes and raves about, I want to make and rave about, too.

Before I jump into why the recipe wasn't for me, let me tell you a few things that actually turned out to be positives about the dessert. For one, the recipe itself was easy to put together and I didn't have to use a million dishes. The cake was not dry whatsoever and texturally, it was appealing with a solid crunch from the hardened icing blanketing the delicate chocolate crumb of the cake underneath.

Because it's so sugary sweet, the pieces I cut were small, and if done similarly, the cake could feed a lot of people for dessert. Bonus points if you have one of those 9 x 13 Pyrex dishes with the lid so you could easily take this to a cookout or picnic. That brings me to my next point: the icing. On its own, it tasted a little bit like those gummy cola bottles that you get at penny candy stores, so that made me happy. After all, who doesn't love nostalgia?

Though the positives were all things that should have produced a deliciously unforgettable experience for me, I, unfortunately, didn't receive that. This is a seriously sweet and gooey cake. The marshmallows, soda and two cups of sugar (not to mention an entire bag of confectioners' sugar in the icing) gave me a headache just reading the recipe. I didn't think the chocolate flavor was deep at all, probably due to the fact that there were only a few tablespoons of cocoa powder in the whole thing.

While I could taste the notes of Coca-Cola (which was cool), it wasn't exceptionally strong. If I’m going to make something called Coca-Cola cake, I don’t want to have to search for the flavor.

Although this is a staple in Faith Hill's house, it probably won't be in mine. This is a cake, however, that I might experiment with a bit in the future. I could see how adjusting some of the proportions and perhaps using a stronger cocoa powder for a deeper flavor may make this a go-to picnic dessert or easy birthday party cake for a crowd.

Tips for Making Faith Hill's Coca-Cola Cake

1. Keep an eye on the icing. Gracie says to mix the icing the entire time to get all the chunks out. I switched over to a whisk halfway through making my icing to help with the process. The glaze can harden quite quickly and create a little crunch in the cake, so be sure to take note of that.

2. Use what you have. The marshmallows create a little "surprise" — according to Faith — when you bite into a piece of the cake. I ended up painstakingly cutting up big marshmallows into six little pieces because that’s what I had on hand, and it worked out just fine.

3. Sift your ingredients. Sifting isn't always necessary, but it is here. Taking the time to sift the dry ingredients means you won't have to mix the batter as long, which can make the cake dense, and helps prevent lumps in the batter.

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