Add This Canned Drink To Chocolate Cake Mix For Caramel Bliss

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If you're looking for ways to elevate boxed chocolate cake mix, try adding root beer to the batter. One of the most unique sodas out there, root beer has a distinct flavor with complementary aromatic ingredients like vanilla, ginger, licorice, anise, and juniper berries. Its complex sweetness is famously used as a dessert foundation for a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a root beer float. The soda's spiced sweetness pairs equally well with the bittersweet notes of chocolate, lending a caramelized depth that'll take chocolate cake mix to the next level of deliciousness. Plus, the carbonation in root beer acts as a leavening agent, ensuring that the crumb is light and fluffy. Simply replace the water or milk your boxed cake mix calls for with a can of root beer, mixing to combine. 

No oil, milk, or eggs are necessary either. Then, bake the cake according to the box's instructions as normal. You can use any brand of root beer you like, but we would always recommend root beer made with real cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. Real sugar does a better job at complementing and enhancing the unique flavors of root beer. Many of the best root beer brands out there not only use cane sugar, but real vanilla and other whole ingredients, too. For that matter, you can also peruse our ranking of boxed chocolate cake mixes for inspiration on which to use. Since a root beer chocolate cake is only two ingredients, you better make sure you get the best of each.

A root beer chocolate cake requires no fancy mixing tools. Of course, no cake is complete without frosting; pick up a can of store-bought frosting or Cool Whip in keeping with the convenience of premade ingredients. But, if you really want the root beer flavor to shine, you can purchase this bottle of Watkins root beer extract and add a few drops to infuse your frosting. If you're feeling more ambitious, you can try our recipe for root beer float cupcakes that we make from scratch with cocoa powder and top with buttercream spiked with root beer extract. Of course, root beer isn't the only soda that'll upgrade a cake recipe. 

Diet coke is another great option for chocolate cake mix. We use cherry cola in this dump cake recipe that pours spiked cake batter over canned cherry pie filling. Strawberries and cream are another classic duo that you can recreate in cake form simply by adding cream soda to a strawberry cake mix. Fans of orange Dreamsicles can add a can of orange soda to a white or yellow boxed cake mix and then top it with vanilla frosting, orange zest, and sugar dusted orange jelly slices. Lemon-lime soda or Sprite would be a bright upgrade to lemon cake mix, or make a dump cake by pouring the lemony batter over blueberry pie filling.