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You'll Never Guess The One Ingredient Used To Make The Best Cake Ever

by Kate Ryan

Avocados. Tofu. Guinness. Candy corn and corn nuts when you're drunk-hosting a cooking show. In the age of the Internet, everything that could go in a cake has probably been attempted before, and someone's likely documented it.

But one Kansas City chef wants to come forward with a discovery that could actually make your cake infinitely more delicious...

MAYO. It's mayo we're talking about.

According to Cosmopolitan, Jasper J. Mirabile Jr. revealed in a recent article for the Kansas City Star that the secret ingredient for his mother's famous chocolate cake is a condiment typically reserved for tuna salad.

Mirabile says in his column,

Now before you go turn your nose up at this recipe, I want you to understand why mayonnaise is used to make some of the finest chocolate cake you'll ever experience.

As an oil substitute, mayo apparently balances out the sweetness of sugar and prevents a cake from drying out. And, according to Mirabile, the use of this ingredient is not as new as you might think. He writes,

My father thought [the cakes] were a little too dry [so] my mother suggested using mayonnaise because she had seen the recipe in a cookbook and in an ad for Hellmann's Mayonnaise in a magazine.

Mirabile also notes one of the first recipes for chocolate cake with mayonnaise was printed back in 1927, which makes sense since staples like oil, butter and eggs were scarce around WWII.

What's so great about this trend is vegans and dairy-lovers alike can try it. With so many mayo options on the market these days, everyone's cake game might just get taken up a notch.

And as everyone knows, nothing pairs better with cake than a frothy, Leonardo DiCaprio-ccino.

Citations: The Surprising Secret Ingredient That Will Make Your Cake Taste a Million Times Better (Cosmopolitan)