Wacky Cake!

OK, this post owes massive thanks to my friend Jackie, who brought the recipe for Wacky Cake to my attention a few months ago. She told me and told me how easy and fantastic it is, and I guess I just felt that the recipe looked a little...lackluster. You probably will, too, and there's a very good reason for that. This recipe was developed during the Depression so people could still have cake even though they didn't have eggs, butter, or dairy products. Or, it was the result of wartime rationing, during World War I. Or during World War II. Or, between the two wars.

Whatever the case, inventive cooks at some time created something marvelous with limited ingredients, and so it is simple, super-easy to prepare, and VEGAN. In today's turbulent economic waters, who wouldn't like to give this little Home Ec gem a run around the park?

Also, it has SCIENCE: The last-minute combination of vinegar and baking soda acts as leavening. The reaction between the two causes the batter to bubble vigorously, and thus, rise!

Ingredients:

1.5 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup cocoa powder, I used a little Dutch-processed and a little regular cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons applesauce

2 tablespoons canola oil

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup cold coffee, or water, if you don't have any leftover coffee from this morning. If you use water, you might reduce the sugar a little. Or not. The recipe is pretty forgiving.

Directions

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Coat 8-inch-square baking pan with nonstick cooking spray.

2. Whisk flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt together in pan. Make 1 large and 2 small craters in dry ingredients. Add oil to large crater and vinegar and vanilla separately to remaining small craters. Pour water into pan, and mix briskly until just a few streaks of flour remain. Immediately put pan in oven.

3. Bake until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out with a few moist crumbs attached, about 30 minutes. When I did this today, 30 minutes was exactly right.

This was SO EASY TO MAKE. AND SO DELICIOUS. The texture is very light, even with the applesauce, but the cake was also very moist and delicate. I don't know if my pictures adequately express this wonderfulness.


I made some coffee-flavored vegan frosting (recipe below) and the combination was amazing. Even though, y'know, the frosting flies in the face of the scrimpy-savey simplicity of the cake. But it also rules, so I say go for it.

Totally Anachronistic Coffee Buttercream Frosting (small batch), adapted slightly from the fantabulous recipe in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

1/4 cup Earth Balance
1.5 cups confectioner's sugar (vegan)
1 tablespoon soy creamer
1-2 teaspoons coffee extract (I like Frontier Naturals alcohol-free coffee extract, but any will do. Also, I think probably instant coffee crystals would work).
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Stick it all in a mixing bowl and beat it (with a mixer or a whisk) until fluffy. You might need to add a little more soy creamer or a little more confectioner's sugar to get the consistency just right.

Then, it's pretty self-explanatory. You either sit down with a bowl of frosting and a pan of cake and a spoon, or you go ahead and wait until the cake cools and use some sort of kitchen utensil to spread the frosting ON the cake. I think either would be perfectly satisfactory.