Wacky Cake
This simple cake recipe is just as tasty as it is simple. With no eggs or mixing bowls needed, this old-fashioned recipe is made with things you probably have in your pantry right now. How perfect is that!
I have a stack (or 12 😉 ) of cookbooks I like to peruse through on occasion to see what catches my eye, whether that’s from a beautifully staged picture or just simply with words. One such cookbook was one that I bought when we visited Hershey years ago. It’s called The Hershey, Pennsylvania Cookbook, and as you can imagine, it’s chockfull of chocolate recipes. As I was flipping through, one specific recipe intrigued me. And it’s this one for Wacky Cake. I read that this is called Wacky Cake because it has no eggs in it and also, you mix all the ingredients together (in a wacky way) in your baking dish, so no extra bowls are needed. I’m all about making less of a mess in my kitchen, so I decided to try it! My recipe was modified from that one I found.
You start by whisking together the dry ingredients in a baking dish. Once they’re all mixed together, you make three little “holes” in the mix.
Next, you pour oil, vanilla extract, and white vinegar in each respective hole. As you can tell, I didn’t make my oil hole large enough. 🙂
Then you simply pour water over top and stir everything together then stick it in the oven. It doesn’t get any easier than that, folks. Easy ingredients, easy instructions…now that’s a win in my book.
And of course it was delicious. This is a very moist cake and it’s the perfect thing to snack on. Actually, that’s what I would call this kind of cake–a snack cake. I simply dusted the top with powdered sugar and that was that.
This Wacky Cake dates back to the Great Depression when commodities were scarce and home bakers could only use ingredients that were most common and available. I think those bakers back then made things stretch and even though this recipe was “born of necessity” it’s still super delicious and satisfies any chocolate-lovin’ sweet tooth you may have a hankerin’ for!
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup Golden Barrel organic cane sugar
- 3 Tbsp cocoa powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp white vinegar
- 5 Tbsp Golden Barrel Coconut Oil
- 1 cup cold water
- dusting Golden Barrel confectioners' sugar
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease an 8" baking dish with cooking spray.
- Sift together dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt) into prepared pan. Make 3 depressions in the mix and pour the vanilla in the first depression, the vinegar in the second, and the oil in the third. Pour the water on top and stir until ingredients are just combined. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in middle comes out with a few crumbs on it. Let cool slightly and dust with confectioners' sugar. Delicious served warm.
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