The Elusive Root Beer Cake

I've been fascinated with root beer cake for awhile.  It all started with a Saveur recipe for, you guessed it, root beer cake.  Complete with root beer gummies on top, it seemed the perfect all-American cake.  The recipe has one rather elusive ingredient: root beer extract.  I halfheartedly searched for months for that extract.  And finally found it in November.  Caught up in the holidays I finally made the cake earlier this month.

Don't get me wrong it's a good cake.  Moist, with a great airy but somehow dense texture.  The icing was equally pleasing, except for a slight sugary grit. But the cake is disappointingly lacking in root beer flavor.  The let down was worsened by the months of anticipation.

That same weekend I came across the Baked cookbook (which, by the way, has some great recipes).  It too had a recipe for a root beer cake, this one a chocolate bundt root beer cake.  Eager to find a root beer flavored cake I tried it.

Now this too is a good cake.  It is made much like Coca-Cola cakes are made, by melting butter, cocoa and the soda on the stove top, and moving on from there.  Here too, it is lacking in true root beer flavor.  For chocolate lovers the fudge icing is exceptional, and makes the cake.  The cake itself is relatively run-of-the-mill.

I am still in search of a cake that truly tastes of root beer.