Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Crazy

I'm not a baker. Mostly be design, but let's face it - competency falls in there somewhere. Or lack there of.

It's too much science. At least with cooking you can screw around with recipes - amounts, ingredients, etc.

With baking you kind of have to follow things to the letter.

I remember back in the '80s, Jon, FG, 710(?) and Sheba(?) got together for a holiday cookie making day. Well apparently it does matter which order you add the ingredients to a bowl as the chemical...chemical...chemical reaction changes. So my cookies didn't come out.

C'est la vie.

If anyone in this family bakes, it's 710. While he might (or might not) have a better talent for it than myself, he certainly has more patience.

So while others might know this recipe for cake, I've never heard of / seen / tasted it before being with 710. His grandmother made it in the '40s due to lack of eggs during wartime. She brought it back into existence when a young 710 was going through food eliminations for allergies.

His family (and maybe others?) call it: Crazy Cake. Again, I never heard of it, but my mother was never a baker either.

It contains very few items:  cocoa powder (1/4 cup), flour (1.5 cups), white sugar (1 cup), baking soda (1 t), oil (6 T), vanilla (1 t), salt (1/2 t) and vinegar (1 T), cold walter (1 cup). No eggs. No butter.

Sift the dry ingredients together into the pan you'll be baking the cake. 

Create three wells for the wet ingredients. These were all somewhat even, but you need a small well for the vanilla, but a bigger one for the oil. 

Fill the wells with the wet ingredients. 


Mix with a fork. Don't beat it.....beat it......   Just enough to incorporate the flower.  Due to the baking soda and vinegar, it foams a little like a volcano you made in grade school saw on the Brady Bunch.

And smooth out and bake. 350 for 30 minutes. 

I suppose you can frost it, but "we" didn't. (I didn't do anything but take pictures and eat it.)

It tastes just fine - light, moist and tasty. I suppose this is good for folks on pseudo-diets, with food allergies or for those ever-annoying vegans.



Song by: Icehouse

4 comments:

anne marie in philly said...

no milk either. vegan cake. dairy free.

I make this cake all the time, most often unfrosted. it doesn't last long around here.

I also use olive oil in my cake, and I use a tablespoon of vanilla cause I happen to like the flavor.

"baking is science for hungry people"

anne marie in philly said...

PS - you don't have to sift anything, that's bullshit.

dump all ingredients into cake pan, mix well, bake, eat. I KNOW you can do that!

Mike said...

Ok, that's one more sign that we were sepated at birth (me being the smarter, more handsome, and modest twin). I grew up on crazy cake and crazy cupcakes. We got the recipe from a recipe exchange book my kindergarten teacher published. My mom still makes this cake. It's easy and delicious (the cake, not my mom).

Unknown said...

Maybe no butter. But there IS oil. Similar purposes. More moist with oil. (I do bake.)