7-Up Cake (3 versions)
(recipe from Jenny, story from Danette)

In high school, I rarely had anything to eat for lunch. But I got by on candy bars and pilfering from my friends' lunch bags. When I started hanging out with a boy named Keenan, I discovered that his lunches were full of all kinds of great things, including a delicious, lightly-textured, and almost painfully sweet confection he called "7-Up Cake". One day when I was at his house, his dad pulled out a freshly-baked 7-Up Cake and I made the mistake of exclaiming, "Oh, 7-Up Cake!". He gave me a funny look and said, "How do you know about 7-Up Cake?". Maybe he'd been wondering where his son's lunches were going. In any case, I was a bit embarrassed and was left with the lasting impression that he must have invented 7-Up Cake himself. I'd never seen or heard of it anywhere else, before or since. But when I told some friends about 7-Up cake, one of them went off and did some research and found out that it's actually an American classic, and came back with not one, but THREE different 7-Up Cake recipes. So now we all can have some 7-Up Cake, no stealing necessary. Recipe #1 most closely resembles the cake I remember, but the lemon curd sauce for #3 sounds fantastic.

7-Up Cake #1

Ingredients:

• 3 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 3 cups sugar
• 2 TB lemon extract or lemon juice
• 5 eggs
• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup 7-Up

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Then alternately add flour and 7-Up, a little bit at a time. Beat in lemon extract. Bake in a ring-shaped (bundt) cake pan for 1 hour and 20 minutes.

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7-Up Cake #2

Cake Ingredients:

• 1 package yellow cake mix
  
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
  
• 10 ounces 7-Up
  
• 1 package instant vanilla pudding
  
• 4 eggs

Icing Ingredients :

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
  
• 1 TB all-purpose flour
  
• 1/2 cup margarine
  
• 1 cup crushed pineapple
  
• 1 cup coconut
  
• 2 eggs

Directions:

Mix cake ingredients together. Bake at 350°F in two 9" round cake pans. Combine icing ingredients together in a medium sauce pan. Cook until it has the consistency of thick gravy.

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7-Up Cake #3

Cake Ingredients:

• 3 sticks butter or margarine, softened
  
• 3 cups sugar
  
• 5 eggs
  
• 3 cups flour
  
• 3/4 cup 7-Up, room-temperature

For Lemon Curd Sauce:

• 2 cups sugar
  
• 1 1/2 sticks butter or margarine
  
• Juice of 6 lemons
  
• 6 eggs, beaten

Directions:

FOR CAKE: Cream butter and sugar together well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add flour and mix well. Fold in the 7-Up.

Pour into a greased and floured bundt pan, and bake at 325°F for 1 1/2 hours or until brown.

LEMON CURD SAUCE: In a saucepan, over medium heat, stir together sugar, butter, and lemon juice. Add eggs and continue stirring until sauce has thickened and is simmering softly.

 

©2001 yum! - May not be reprinted without permission.