As many of you may remember, I am a recovering diet soda addict and so nowadays when I get a hankering for soda, I buy Zevia. For those of you unfamiliar with Zevia, it’s an all natural, zero-calorie soda that is sweetened with stevia. I usually buy it at Whole Foods but recently a friend of mine put me in touch with the marketing director of Zevia who was looking for some fun and creative ways to include Zevia in different types of recipes, so I offered to do a little experimenting and they brought me cases and cases of Zevia to play with.
Now since I’m six months pregnant, I was unable to experiment with alcohol (which of course was the first thing to pop into my head) so I went with the next best thing… cake!
This is really just a healthier-spin on a recipe that has been circulated for years using traditional cola in a cake.
I used a box of Arrow Head Mills Organic Chocolate Cake Mix as my base, added a can of Zevia Cola, two eggs, and a bit of coconut oil and the result was this surprising rich and light chocolate cupcake.
After having my friends do a little taste testing, not one of them could detect the secret ingredient, which surprised me because I felt like I could detect the cola flavor. Although now I wonder if it wasn’t just because I knew it was in there.
Either way it was a fun and successful experiment that brought us lots of laughs when taste testing with friends.
As for the icing on these cupcakes, I just have to point out that there is no butter and no refined sugar; simply cocoa powder, honey, vanilla, and coconut oil. I’m very excited about it, but I think it’s way too special to play second fiddle to my cola cupcakes SO it will be earning it’s own post just as soon as I get to make it again and snap a photo.