  Recently EuCd$_2$As$_2$ was predicted to be a magnetic Weyl semi-metal with a
lone pair of Weyl nodes generated by A-type antiferromagnetism and protected by
a rotational symmetry. However, it was soon discovered that the actual magnetic
structure broke the rotational symmetry and internal pressure was later
suggested as a route to stabilize the desired magnetic state. In this work we
test this prediction by synthesizing a series of Eu$_{1-x}$Ba$_x$Cd$_2$As$_2$
single crystals and studying their structural, magnetic and transport
properties via both experimental techniques and first-principles calculations.
We find that small concentrations of Ba ($\sim 3-10\% $) lead to a small
out-of-plane canting of the Eu moment. However, for higher concentrations this
effect is suppressed and a nearly in-plane model is recovered. Studying the
transport properties we find that all compositions show evidence of an
Anomalous Hall Effect dominated by the intrinsic mechanism as well as large
negative magnetoresistances in the longitudinal channel. A non-monotonic
evolution of the transport properties is seen across the series which
correlates to the proposed canting suggesting canting may enhance the
topological effects. Careful density functional theory calculations using an
all-electron approach revise prior predictions finding a purely ferromagnetic
ground state with in-plane moments for both the EuCd$_2$As$_2$ and
Eu$_{0.5}$Ba$_{0.5}$Cd$_2$As$_2$ compounds - corroborating our experimental
findings. This work suggests that Ba substitution can tune the magnetic
properties in unexpected ways which correlate to changes in measures of
topological properties, encouraging future work to locate the ideal Ba
concentration for Eu moment canting.
