Hi TrinsMom,

Apologies for the late reponse... I only just came across this recipe and your comments.

The

reason you could taste the baking soda is because it hadn't been

neutralised in your cake mixture. Baking soda is alkaline, and you need

something acidic to take away its taste. The vinegar will do some of

that but as it's quite a lot of baking soda, I think it needs more

acidic ingredients to take away the yucky soda taste.

This recipe

calls for 1/3 cocoa powder --- that's quite a lot, and I think the

purpose of the cocoa powder is to neutralise the baking soda. So the

choice of cocoa powder will make a big difference: Natural cocoa

powders are acidic. You might have used an alkalised cocoa powder

(these tend to be darker in colour, and tend to smell more fragrant)

which wouldn't neutralise the baking soda.

From experience,

recipes with baking soda work really well with natural cocoa powder, and

alkalised cocoa powders tend to work better in recipes with baking

powder.

Hope this helps! It's definitely worth trying again with a different cocoa.

L :)