Wacky Cake

So I made this a long time ago, way back when I still lived at my apartment. I was looking through my photos and realized I never posted it though! It's called Wacky cake but i kind of want to call it Monster Cake as it makes a little face at one point in the prep process.





Funny story first. I was flipping through my America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook and reading through dessert recipes to try to find something simple to make and as I was reading their chocolate cake recipe I laughed at their note about "some recipes even called for us to make holes in the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients into those." They dismissed it as way too complicated. A couple years later ATK touts the brilliance of doing just that when they publish the wacky cake recipe in their Best Lost Recipes book. Amusing, no? I thought so.





Anyway. So, my Best Lost Recipes book tells me this recipe came about during WWII when people made do without rationed food. To make a cake without eggs they devised this method of mixing the ingredients in the pan so that when they poured vinegar into the pan it would react with the baking soda and give it a lift - but it has to go into the oven quickly after the reaction in order for the rise to stick. Here's the All Recipes version that's not all copyrighted by America's Test Kitchen though it looks really similar. Wacky Cake. Photos of my wacky cake journey!

You see all the dry ingredients mixed in the pan with the holes made above. Then you pour the liquids into the holes.

Pour water over the whole thing and stir.


Then you bake it comes out all normal looking like any other chocolate cake.



Dust with some powdered sugar and enjoy. Yum!