Too hot to turn on the oven? Here’s how to bake cake in a crock pot!
I’d like to say there was a day that “we needed cake” but did we actually need cake? Meh. Define “need.”
But on this day that we “needed cake” it was 101 degrees outside. So baking was a silly idea. “I wonder if my spinach in a cake situation would work in a crock pot,” thought I. With this in mind, I looked on the internet a bit and sure enough, it seemed quite doable.
Look at all the spinach that I blended into our cake. So did we need cake? Yes, because of the spinach.
This is what you need to know about adding spinach to cake:
- You can’t taste it.
- You can’t see it.
- It makes the cake extra moist, which is actually better than eating a cake without spinach. True story.
I buttered my crock pot. It looked like this. And now you can see my crock pot stains. This thing is well-used.
I blended the cake ingredients along with the spinach, and poured in the batter which looked like this. See, you can’t tell there’s spinach in there:
Next, we worked a little crock-pot-cake magic. This calls for a paper towel, a wooden spoon to prop the lid, and then a lid placed cock-eyed over the paper towel and spoon. This lets the crock pot vent a bit while it bakes. We all need to vent sometimes.
At one point when I checked on my cake’s progress, my paper towels fell and got chocolatey. I share this picture with you to make you feel better about your messy towels if and when this happens to you:
After about an hour and a half, our house smelled amazing and our cake looked like this. The kitchen was still nice and cool while the oven sat alone and unused.
The babies were up from their naps at this point and it was time for dinner and an outing for the evening. So I left the cake sitting all night in the crock pot (lid on after it cooled). The next morning, I carefully loosened the edges and worked it out of the pot, turning it out like this:
Then I frosted the cake, which made the kids sing “Happy Birthday to Nobody” because why would Mom be making a fancy cake like this since it wasn’t anyone’s birthday?
Would you look at this amazingness? What spinach? I don’t see any spinach.
Listen, you have got to try this! Use a cake mix, use your favorite wholesome cake recipe, just add spinach to cake and then bake it in a crock pot to avoid the oven. We are huge fans! This cake is so moist and good!
How to Bake Cake in a Crock Pot
- 1 chocolate cake mix
- 1¼ cups water
- ½ cup olive oil
- 3 eggs
- 3-4 cups fresh spinach
- Blend everything up in a high power blender.
- Pour the batter into a buttered crock pot.
- Lay paper towels to cover the top of the crock.
- Place a wooden spoon between the paper towels and the crock pot lid to allow for venting.
- Cook on Hi for one to one and a half hours or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
- Once completely cooled, gently work the cake out of the crock with a spatula.
- Frost and serve!
How to frost your cake
I recommend this Chocolate Fudge Frosting (though I no longer make powdered sugar from sucanat like I used to, eeee).
My favorite-favorite is actually Cream Cheese Frosting.
And if you want to cut way back on the sugar, here’s a Stevia Sweetened Cream Cheese Frosting that is really good. Add a pinch of sugar to take away the bitterness without adding much sugar.
Last idea: Simply whip some cream like this and plop it on top. Super good!
But wait, there’s more. What if we topped it with Peanut Butter Cup Whipped Cream??!
Or this Peanut Butter Cream Frosting?!
Let me know which turns out to be your favorite!
