Recipe: Crazy Cake for Lazy People
This is an excellent, super easy chocolate cake recipe. It doesn’t require eggs or butter or milk, but you still get a light, moist, chocolatey (but not sugary-sweet) cake. According to the OP, this recipe was popular during the Great Depression.
I’m not a vegan or anything, but I never seem to have eggs or some other crucial perishable ingredient around when I have a craving for cake. Anyway, I made this last night and it turned out beautifully. My only alteration of the recipe was to replace 1 cup of water with coffee, to bring out the chocolate flavor.
Yields one 9 x 13 inch cake
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups white sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 3/4 cup vegetable oil
- 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup cold water
- 1 cup coffee
Directions
- Sift flour, sugar, salt, soda, and cocoa together into a 9 x 13 inch ungreased cake pan. Make three wells. Pour oil into one well, vinegar into second, and vanilla into third well. Pour cold water + coffee over all, and stir well with fork.
- Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30-40 minutes, or until tooth pick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Frost or serve with whipped cream and fruit, ice cream, or a dusting of confectioner’s sugar.
In case you’re wondering, the vinegar (along with the baking soda) is necessary to help the cake rise. You can’t taste it at all in the final product.
