Ever seen a cake that looks ill?

The question ‘what makes us human’ ties into the unit because cooking is what led us to evolve into Homo sapiens, because we didn’t need to dedicate energy into evolving large jaws and teeth, and instead used energy to develop large brains. In this unit of classes, we did things related to baking food. We changed the recipe for a banana bread and a brownie. We didn’t do it to change their taste, we changed it for the chemistry. Also, we grew mushrooms and mycelium with mixed (read: bad) results in this unit. While the first unit focused on farming food, this unit focused on baking it. So what I decided to do is get myself a can of monster energy, and two boxes of cake mix to see what would happen to a cake if I used monster energy in place of water and vegetable oil. The independent variable of this experiment is what I use as an emulsifier in the cake recipe, the dependent variable being what happens to the cakes.

My question: what happens if I put monster energy in a cake?

My hypothesis: the cake takes longer to bake, and is more rubbery texture wise.

My materials:

From left to right:

Six eggs (three pictured)

2 boxes of cake mix 

1.5 cups of vegetable oil (i had to use canola oil for there was no vegetable oil to be found)

1 can of monster energy

1 cup of water 

My procedure:

Make one cake batter according to the box instructions, make the monster cake by simply combining the cake mix, monster, and three eggs into a mix then pouring them both into different pans, then have them cooked for thirty minutes as instructed to do so on the box.

Pictured below are the two batters before I mixed them. Can you guess which is which?

Top is normal, the bottom is the monster. Also, this was the night I learned that monster energy is actually not green, but an amber brown.

Pictured above are the two cakes before I sentenced them to trial by oven. Right is the control, left is the monster. Notice how the monster batter already started to expand before it baked due to the carbonation. This meant that I wasn't able to use all of it for fear of it overflowing.

After baking, the cakes looked like this:

Top normal, bottom monster.

My results:

It’s minutes later, and when I attempted to move one of the cakes it jiggled. Like jell-o. So I went for the other cake,and the same thing happened.

I set the timer for another five minutes.

Then another. Then another, after that. Then I just set it for fifteen minutes.

After the fifteen was up, I did the “stick-a-knife-into-the-center-of-the-cake-to-see-if it’s-safe-to-eat”-test, and the results were just less than perfect but at this point I was ready to just throw them both into the fridge to cool and call it a night, So in the morning I checked on them and the control cake looked and tasted like a normal unfrosted cold yellow cake, however the monster cake was of a sort of hard boiled egg consistency, meaning my hypothesis was correct. I could still taste a hint of flavor that the monster left behind, but it wasn't much. Other than the strange consistency and the monster hint, the cake was normal. Sort of like what a cake would look like from two universes over. This means that the canola oil and water did something to overpower the eggs that the monster did not. 

Follow up question:

Would it have been different if I used vegetable oil instead of canola?

In conclusion: My hypothesis was correct, as the monster cake’s hard boiled egg texture was more rubbery than the control cake, however the monster might’ve leached into the control cake because of the steam, because canola oil’s burn point is just 400 (75 degrees above what I was cooking at) The monster’s steam might’ve made the control cake’s canola oil start to degrade, which could be why it was taking so long to bake, as the eggs wouldn't really play nice with the rest of the batter.

Works cited:

https://www.allrecipes.com/article/difference-canola-oil-vegetable-oil/