Black Magic Chocolate Cake (w/ condensed tomato soup)

This recipe came from some really old-skool book on really really crazy recipes - such as using Campbell's condense tomato soup in a cake. But the poster claimed that it produced an amazingly rich and moist chocolate cake, so I swallowed my skepticism long enough to give it a shot.

Boy am I glad I did. The cake really WAS amazingly moist, and if it weren't for the lingering scent of cooked tomatoes in the kitchen, I would never have known what the main ingredient was. One note, make sure you grab a low-sodium soup. If you can't find a low-sodium alternative though, if you're planning on icing the cake, even something as mildly sugared as the Chinese-bakery style whipped frosting works quite well to offset the sodium.

• 1 3/4 cups flour (or 1 3/4 cups plus 2 T cake flour)
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 eggs
• one 10-oz can low sodium condensed tomato soup (such as Campbell's)
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1 tsp vanilla

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1. Pre-heat oven to 350 F. Grease and “flour” choice of baking pan(s). (You may want to use chocolate powder instead of flour so it doesn’t show up against the dark cake. You can use one 9x13 pan or two 6” round pans.)
2. Sift and then whisk together the dry ingredients.
3. In another bowl, put all the wet ingredients and beat until it is well mixed. Add the dry ingredients and mix well.
4. Pour into the prepared pan(s).
5. Bake until a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. (See below for time guidelines.)

Note: I've put this into various sizes of vessels and they all came out beautifully, whether I made the rounds separately or cut a thick cake in half, etc. So, a general rule of thumb:
2 round cake pans: start checking around 30 mins
9" x 13" pan: 35 - 40 mins
6" pan x 3" height: 50 mins
5" ramekin: 35 mins