Crazy Cake

In continuation of Dessert Week for my husband, I submit an old family favorite.  My mother told me my father’s mother (born in 1910) had used this recipe because in the Great Depression eggs were hard to come by.  The name is from the fact that making a cake without eggs is just “crazy.”  The suggestion of any other kind of cake was futile around my birthday, so I guess you could say I was crazy about it, ;)

Ingredients:

  • 2 C sugar
  • 3 C all-purpose flour
  • 6 T cocoa
  • 1 t salt
  • 2 t baking soda
  • 2 t vanilla
  • 2 T vinegar
  • 10 T melted butter
  • 2 C cold water

I feel like these instructions are quite wanting without pictures but I will try to explain the amazing fun this cake can be.

Place all the first five ingredients in a 9×13 baking dish (I love that this can be so easily halved and put into a 9×9!), and mix well with a fork.  This should result in a consistently speckeled powder.  Next, carve a smilie face into the powder, two eyes and a smiling mouth.  One eye is for the vanilla, the other for the vinegar and the smile is about to be a yellow, buttery smile in need of a good brushing.  Enjoy your cute creation.

Now enjoy the destruction with the addition of the 2 cups of cold water and fluff with your fork.  Make sure all the powder has been mixed in well, as a youngster I would usually miss the corners and there would be quite a bit of unedible dry flour down there when the cake was sliced.

Now put in the oven for 30-40 minutes at 350 F.  Use a toothpick to check if it is done.  Stab the middle of your cake, when it comes out clean your cake is ready.  But be sure to be gentle when pulling it out and pushing it in while checking, this cake has a tendency to drop in the middle.

Top with your favorite fudge or chocolate icing, or with my mother’s favorite: confectioner’s sugar (a good substitute for my icing-hating hubby), and voila! An eggless chocolate cake that will not last long in almost any home.

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