Root Beer Layer Cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 2 cups flour
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 3/4 tsp kosher salt
- 1 + 1/3 cups butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup Root Beer Syrup (concentrated syrup for making drinks, like Soda Stream)
- 4 eggs
- 1/2 cup whole milk
Frosting
- 1 cup butter (softened to room temperature)
- 4 cups icing sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 3 Tbsp boiling water
- 1/4 cup Root Beer Syrup
- 1/2 tsp salt
Instructions
Cake
- Cream butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the root beer syrup and blend well. Add eggs one at a time, blending fully between each egg.
- Mix flour, baking powder and salt together. Alternate adding the flour mixture and the milk into the butter mixture, in approximately three separate parts. Mix until the batter is just mixed.
- Split the batter into prepared cake tins (2 or 3, 9" cake rounds) and bake at 350ºF/175ºC until toothpick comes out clean (18-20 minutes if split into 3 tins, 22-25 minutes if split into 2 tins). Let cool 5 minutes, then remove from tins and allow to cool fully.
Frosting
- Beat butter until pale and fluffy. Add 1 cup of icing sugar, vanilla and salt and beat well. Add remaining icing sugar, mixing until mostly mixed. Will be dry. Add boiling water one tablespoon at a time, mixing in between additions. Add the root beer syrup and mix well. Once mixed, turn the speed up to high and beat until smooth and fluffy.
- Frost the cake, adding a generous amount of frosting between each layer of cake.
- Serve.
And now for the details…
I love root beer. Always have. It is probably my favourite of the sodas. Having a frothy, cold root beer in a frosty mug (tip of the hat to you, A&W) is such a treat, between the candy-like taste and the slushy, frozen bits of the drink formed from hitting the cold glass and floating in the icy liquid. It is very sweet? You bet it is. It it rich and satisfying? Heck yes.
And those descriptors of very sweet, rich and satisfying are definitely applicable to this cake as well. Particularly the sweet. For serious, this one is not for the faint of heart; if you like really sweet sweets, then this is the cake for you!
Root beer is very much a North American invention. The “root” part of root beer is literal. The drink was originally made with a selection of roots, bark and other flavours which were brewed and then fermented into either an alcoholic and soft beverage.
The predominant flavour is sassafras, which, honestly, I just like because it’s super fun to say. C’mon. Say it with me now: sassafras. But root beer was not the first drink to use sassafras. Indigenous nations had been using the entire sassafras tree long before the colonists came through, in everything from teas to tinctures to poultices. The tree is thought to have medicinal properties, but the oil from the roots, safrole, is on the list of the FDA as a mild carcinogen, which has resulted in a number of producers to use artificial flavours to mimic the sassafras taste.
But enough about the origins of this tasty drink, let’s get to turning it into a delicious, sweet dessert!
We start out by making the cake. We are going to be essentially making a plain butter cake, cutting down a wee bit on the sugar, and adding the already sweet root beer syrup to give our flavour.
Now, you could always make your favourite butter cake recipe and add a root beer extract instead. But I wanted to create something that used an ingredient that seems to be much more prevalent right now, and since I seem to see Soda Stream, or similar, syrups all over the place, it only made sense to go with one of these.
To start us off, we will be beating the hell out of… I mean… creaming… the butter and sugar. I am not sure if everyone is aware of the #buttergate fiasco that happened up in Canada recently, but I have to agree with Julie Van Rosendaal on this one, we do not seem to get the creaminess one expects out of butter. Even softened, the butter was a bit on the waxy side, and I needed to put in a bit more elbow grease to get the result I wanted. For this recipe, it meant a lot of stopping, scraping and beating to try and get the butter and sugar to mesh in a fluffy way. Once it appears a pale yellow and is nice and fluffy, blend in the root beer syrup, then add the eggs, one at a time, mixing each in completely before adding the next.
Next, in a separate bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder, then stir in the salt. With the mixer set on low speed, alternate adding the powder mix with adding the milk, in about three parts. When everything is mixed, it is time to split the batter between prepared cake tins. I used three 9″ round tins, but you could use two, it will just require a slightly longer cooking time. The batter will be fairly thick, so smooth and even it out in the cake tins, because it will not settle the same way as thinner batters. Place the tins in a preheated 350ºF/175ºC oven, in the middle of the oven, and bake for 18-20 minutes if you have used three tins. Or 22-25 minutes if you have used two tins. Bake them until a toothpick comes out clean from the cake centre.
Once baked, remove the cakes from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes. Then run a knife around the edges, and turn the cakes out onto a cooling rack and allow to cool completely.
Once the cakes are cooled, it’s time to frost!
To make the frosting, mix the butter with one cup of icing sugar, salt and vanilla until fully mixed, then beat on high speed until the mix becomes fluffy. Mix in the remaining icing sugar under low speed. The mix will be quite dry, so do not worry about fully mixing, just mostly brought together. Add the boiling water, one tablespoon at a time, mixing each in before adding the next. Finally, add the root beer syrup and mix in completely. The icing should be a little too liquidy at this point. This is right where you want it to be. Bring the speed up to high and beat for several minutes until the frosting is light and fluffy.
Finally, frost the cake, with a generous amount of frosting between each cake layer, then frosting the outside, smoothing the frosting across the surface. Decorate to your heart’s desire! I went with maraschino cherries and chocolate sprinkles 🙂 Serve immediately.
Happy eating