Why the recipe for the easy chocolate cake? Here is the back story: So back during the depression there were shortages of supplies, or it was just too costly to get things like eggs, butter, yeast. Want to bake a cake and you may be out of luck. Sound familiar? Here in week 5 of physical distancing I almost cried when my husband went to Costco and then Walmart and found zero eggs at any price. We got lucky and found some at the local grocery store; but the point of going to Costco was to avoid going to more than one store – frustrating.
So, here we are trying to conserve things in a way that I really never thought we would have to in my lifetime. We poked fun at our grandparents for washing plastic bags and saving milk bags to reuse, saving wrapping paper and bacon grease. Lo and behold I am now doing all of these things; ok, I always saved bacon grease because it is awesome for some cooking. I say it is a good thing this happened now so that my generation, who witnessed our grandparents wisdom, knew what to do. Our kids would have otherwise had no idea. Ok so the search for this easy chocolate cake came from that: no eggs, or milk, and it uses things on hand. I can also be found under names like “depression cake” or crazy cake… doubles easily…
Ingredients
flour 1.5 cups
sugar (white) 1 cup
cocoa powder 1/4 cup
vegetable oil 3/8 cup (or so dont stress over the exact amount…)
water – 1 cup cold
vinegar (white) – 1 tablespoon
vanilla – 1 teaspoon
chocolate chips (a handfull or so)
sprinkles to top…
Directions for easy chocolate cake
Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a square glass pyrex baking dish with oil or baking spray. (but this can also be done right in the glassware with no greasing and all mixing done in the one bowl and no clean up! but this makes cleaning the pan a bit harder after baking). Mix all dry ingredients in mixing bowl – you can sift together but I am lazy and never do… it would probably make it fluffier though. Make three depressions in the dry ingredients and add oil to one, vinegar to another and vanilla to the third. Pour the water over all and mix all together. Pour into baking pain and toss hand fulls of chocolate chips over top and add sprinkles. Bake for 25-30 mins checking occasionally at end until inserted knife comes out clean.