Growing up, I thought we were the only family who made this weird chocolate cake that had vinegar but no eggs or milk or butter in it.  I just Googled “crazy cake” and I’m wrong.  It seems that everyone makes it, with lots of different modifications.  It comes from at least as far back as WWII (with wartime food restrictions) but it makes sense to me that it was being made in the Depression or even further back.  Mom remembers Granny making it for them when they lived in Iliamna.

Why is it dangerous?  Because it’s extremely easy and fast to make and if you add chocolate chips to the batter, it’s even richer and more yummy.  This cake was delicious too but fussy enough to be reserved for special occasions. Crazy cake is so easy I want to make it a permanent resident on my kitchen counter.  Even if it’s not a permanent resident though, it’s a good recipe to have in your back pocket for those “we have guests coming over and I have nothing to serve them” emergencies.

This is the doubled edition.

On Friday, I had to make a dessert for a function at church and discovered that I had very little brown sugar and very little cocoa powder.  That eliminated all cookies and also brownies.  Then I remembered crazy cake!  So I whipped up a batch and put it in the bundt pan, thought, “that doesn’t look like much batter.  Oh well,” and baked it.  Then I actually read the directions (in Mom’s handwriting) and discovered, “double for a 9×13.”  Oops.  I was just going to deal with a little cake but then it sort of broke on its way out of the pan and I decided that I certainly couldn’t bring a flawed cake to church. 🙂  So I made another batch, doubled it this time, and then too bad, so sad, we had to eat up the little edition.

Crazy Cake (from Laura’s mom who got it from her mom)
(this is the 9×13 version because really, who wants a little cake, right?)

3 C flour
4 T cocoa powder (not Dutch-processed)
2 tsp baking soda
1 C sugar
1 tsp salt

Stir dry ingredients together in an ungreased 9×13 pan.** Make three holes in the mixture.

1/2 C plus 2 T oil (I used coconut oil but vegetable oil is fine)
2 T vinegar (white is fine)
2 T vanilla

Pour oil in one hole, vinegar in another, and vanilla in the last hole.

2 C cold water

Pour all over the mixture and stir well but don’t over mix.

(That’s the traditional way to mix it.  You can also just mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, add the wet ingredients, stir, and then pour into the pan.)

Chocolate chips (optional)

Stir some in for extra chocolate-y goodness.

Bake in a 350 oven for approximately 30 minutes or until done.  After the cake is cool, sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired.

**If you want to use a bundt pan, grease the pan just to be safe (I actually floured it too because I get paranoid about bundt pans) and do the mixing in a separate bowl.