Wacky Cake Recipe: Cheap, Easy and Chocolaty

(a) a chocolate lover

(b) a vegan

(c) someone on a tight budget

(d) not a particularly skilled cook

(e) all of the above

If you answered "yes" to any of these, then do I have the cake recipe for you: Wacky Cake! If you haven't tried this economical, vegan-friendly, chocolaty treat, you've been missing out. Even novice cooks will be able to handle this one. If you're too lazy too bake from scratch, give this a try. There is less preparation and clean up involved with this recipe than with many store-bought cake mixes.

First, check your cabinets or go shopping to make sure you have the following ingredients: flour, sugar, cocoa, baking SODA (not baking powder!!!), salt, vegetable oil, vinegar, and vanilla. You will also need a cup of water. (I live in a drought-stricken area, so I no longer assume this is always available). No fancy stuff! Just use regular all-purpose flour (unbleached is okay). No balsamic or rice wine vinegars, just use white or apple cider vinegar. Plain table salt is fine. You can use blended vegetable oil, corn oil, canola oil, melted shortening - whatever you prefer. Cheap vanilla flavoring will work fine if you can't afford the good stuff. If you need to shop for kitchen supplies, you will need a 8x8 or 8x11½ inch pan, a set of measuring cups, a set of measuring spoons, a big spoon or spatula to mix with and a working oven (of course) and that's basically it. No mixers or other fancy equipment needed. You don't even need a refrigerator because all of the ingredients are shelf stable.

What else is nice about Wacky Cake is that the preparation is minimal. It is traditional to mix the whole thing in the pan, but I find it difficult to incorporate all the ingredients this way and I have trouble keeping the liquids from sloshing out. I prefer using a medium-sized bowl to mix in, but it's your call.

Let's cook! Turn on your oven and set it at 350˚F. In the pan or bowl, mix together the dry ingredients first:

1 ½ cups of flour

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

Now, here's where my recipe really goes off base from most other Wacky Cake recipes. Traditionally, you are to make indentations in the dry ingredients and put each of the wet ingredients in each indentation, except for the water, which gets dumped in all at once. Why? I don't know. Instead, I use the über lazy method.

Take a two-cup glass measuring cup and fill with water to the one cup line. Pour in vegetable oil until the liquids reach the 1 ¹/₃ cup line (i.e., ¹/₃ cup oil). Then add 1 tablespoon vinegar and 1 teaspoon vanilla to the cup. It won't mix together (you know, oil and water), so just pour it into the dry ingredients. Mix wet and dry together.

Your batter does not need to be entirely free of lumps, but try to make sure there isn't too much dry mixture. You will see the mixture start to bubble up a bit. That's what it's supposed to do. If you used a bowl, go ahead and pour the mixture into the pan. You don't need to grease the pan first. It will be fine - really! If you're brave, you can lick the spoon. You don't have to worry about bacteria from raw eggs, but it might taste a bit funky. Don't worry - it gets better!

Bake for about 25-30 minutes. When it springs back from lightly pressing it on top, it should be ready, or you could use the toothpick method to test it. Take a toothpick and insert it about halfway between the edge of the pan and the center of the cake. If the toothpick comes out clean or has a bit of crumb on it, you're okay. If it's coated with batter, give it a few more minutes.

Usually, this cake is eaten as a snacking cake straight out of the pan (but, you can also slice it up and serve it on a plate!) I have managed a few times to turn the cake out and decorate it, but it's risky. It's best to frost it in the pan. As for frosting - well, you're on your own. Any kind of frosting that you enjoy on any other chocolate cake should taste good on this one or you can just sprinkle some powdered sugar on top. You can also try it au naturale.

My family has been making Wacky Cake as long as I can remember. It was my mother's favorite kind of cake. Even on her birthday, she wanted Wacky Cake. I started learning to cook when I was about 7 years old and this is one of the first things I learned to cook and now I'm teaching it to my 7-year-old son. In the early 70s, my mother used a recipe from Peg Bracken's classic I Hate to Cook Book. A few years later, we found a similar recipe in The Encyclopedia of Country Living: An Old Fashioned Recipe Book by Carla Emery. In this case, the recipe has a very different name and is listed under "Quick Breads", oddly enough. There are several minor variations that can be found on the Internet. I've tried a few variations and they usually come out basically the same. I found one recipe that uses applesauce, but I have not tried it yet. I also haven't tried making cupcakes, but I've heard that works great as well.

About the only way I have ever messed up this cake is when I accidentally used baking powder instead of baking soda. Other than that or outright burning it, this cake is almost foolproof!

Enjoy!