When I was online the other day, I saw something that completely threw me for a loop, which was a recipe for a cake made in a crock pot. Seeing it instantly sparked my curiosity. It kind of reminded me of that cake in a cup trend that took over Pinterest a few years ago. (which I hated, by the way. I could never get a cake to turn out right). Anyways, while I was totally skeptical of the idea of baking a cake in a crock pot, I knew that I wanted to try it because I thought that it would be for an interesting blog post, so today I did just that.

Going into this, I have to admit I had a really bad feeling. Crock pot cooking isn’t something that I have a ton of experience with and I definitely expected it to have poor results. I figured the cake would be soggy and difficult to remove from the crock pot. Plus, I wasn’t sure how well it would cook in that kind of heat. Nevertheless, I got out a crock pot and a cake mix and got to baking. The crock pot that I used was on the small side, which I think might have had a negative effect on the finished product. If I was to do this whole thing over, I would use a larger crock pot. I think that might have helped the cake cook more thoroughly and evenly.

I chose to use the Duncan Hines Signature Lemon Supreme cake mix, which is a great mix with a subtle lemon flavor. I’ve used it several times before when baking cakes in the oven. I thought this was the best choice because I’ve developed a pretty good sense of what the cake’s texture and consistency should be like.

Anyways, I made the mix per usual, following the directions listed on the box. I sprayed the bottom of the crock pot with cooking oil before pouring in the batter in order to prevent the cake from sticking. Once I had the batter inside, I smoothed the top of it out with a spatula and put on the crock pot’s lid. I read online that cakes typically take three hours to bake in a crock pot, but I decided to check up on it at both the one and two hour marks.

After the first hour, I walked over and saw that the cake had barely cooked. The edges were slightly brown, but the center was still gooey and bubbly. I gave it a prod with a toothpick and sure enough the cake was totally raw. I’d had the crock pot’s heat on low at the time, so I then decided to turn it up to the high setting and leave it go for another hour. An hour later, I came back and found pretty much the same sight. The cake’s sides had darkened up a bit more, but the middle was still under-cooked. The few parts of the cake that were cooked had become really soggy, too. By the third hour, I had officially given up on getting the center of the caked cooked. I made the decision to remove the uncooked center and take the cake out of the crock pot. As you can see in the photo, this left me with very little cake.

I found the texture and consistency of the cake to be very sponge-like. It was a lot soggier than I would have wanted, which sort of ruined the whole thing for me. From now on, I think I’m going to stick to baking cakes in ovens. Crock pot baking took far too long for the kind of results it had.

Have you ever made a cake in a crock pot? 

Sincerely,

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