If you told me a year and a half ago that I wouldn’t have just one, but two vegan cakes on the site, and that I liked them so that I honestly question from time to time why any cakes have any eggs in them, ever, I’d have thought you lost your mind. Let me explain: I know there are amazing and delicious vegan cakes in the world, but I believed I’d need flax eggs or the liquid from a can of chickpeas or some other magic to pull them off; I figured I’d leave it to the experts. Plus, I suspect my devotion to butter and buttermilk is well-established by now.
But that was before I learned about Wacky Cakes, a.k.a. Depression Cakes or Cockeyed Cakes, if you’re a Peg Bracken fan, which of course, everyone should be. They typically have about 7 completely basic, everyday ingredients and they’re usually chocolate-flavored, but never enough for me. So in my version, I used a higher proportion of cocoa powder and olive oil, whose fruitiness is exceptionally cozy with chocolate. The cake is so good, we recently found in the fridge a chunk of the one I made in late November (five weeks later) and my husband refused to let me throw it away, taking his life in his hands to eat it right then and there. If you’ve made it, maybe you understand.
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