Chocolate cake is a classic, timeless treat that every home cook should be able to whip up for special occasions. But if you haven’t quite perfected your recipe just yet, it could be because it’s missing a key ingredient. Duke’s Mayo — though they may be a bit biased — makes a strong argument that mayonnaise is the secret ingredient that will take your chocolate cake to the next level.
The reasoning behind this somewhat odd ingredient choice is that the creamy consistency will make the chocolate cake extremely moist. Mayo is made of oil and egg yolks, after all, and it can serve as a substitute for oil and egg yolks in your baking recipes.
According to the recipe, you’ll need the typical ingredients for chocolate cake: unsweetened cocoa powder, flour, baking soda, salt, vanilla extract and water. Then, of course, you’ll also add mayonnaise to your shopping list.
From there, you’ll bake the cake and prepare the decadent frosting — which does not call for mayo.
In the end, you’ll wind up with cake that’s the perfect consistency — rich yet moist. And it’s all topped off with a sweet, chocolatey frosting.
And now, we’re convinced!
Once you accept mayonnaise as an ingredient that will make your baked goods better, you’ll open up a whole new world of baking possibilities. Duke’s also recommends incorporating mayo into recipes for coconut cakes, banana bread and even savory baked items such as biscuits and cornbread.
While it may be surprising to think that all this time, mayo is the thing your cake’s been missing, adding extra-creamy ingredients to give baked goods a moist consistency isn’t unusual. Hershey’s has a recipe that calls for sour cream instead of mayonnaise, for example.
Hershey’s recipe includes a 16-ounce container of sour cream in your cake batter to give you the ultimate cake. Pair that with a fudge frosting, and you’ll be in chocolate-cake heaven.
Of course, if we had to pick a favorite add-in to classic chocolate cake, it’d have to be red wine. A recipe from Baker By Nature proves that the only thing better than drinking a glass of red wine with your chocolate cake is adding red wine to the batter and frosting — and this recipe also incorporates sour cream into the cake batter.
So, how will you upgrade your go-to cake recipe? Add in a little mayo or sour cream? Wine, even? Why not taste-test them all?
This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Check out Simplemost for additional stories.
