I have no idea why I chose to show this cake on a pristine plate with a shiny fork–this cake is made to be held in the hand and eaten while running around the garden.
I wanted to tell you how I came to make Crazy Cake one summer in Oklahoma.
I stayed with my grandparents for much of the summer from an early age, my summer home in the South. I spent my days dressing up Brownie, the Border Collie in my outgrown clothes, brushing her till she purred (dogs purr silently and smile loudly), running with her across the 40 acre farm, climbing trees and quietly discovering nests full of eggs, carefully stepping through the patch of grass on the path where I knew sandburs grew, avoiding the horned toads, but pausing to watch Brownie poke her nose at them, ears forward until they squirt blood up at her and I had to drag her away.
We ran across the sharp quarry gravel driveway (I liked to practice this in bare feet because I thought it made me tough–it worked), through the orchard to the big grey wooden gate where I climbed, Brownie slipped through a hole, and we ran into the field with oaks till we found the goats. Most of them ran away from us apart from George and his gang. We raised George from a small kid when a coyote killed his mama. He lived in a little box cushioned with grandpa’s old work clothes in a warm spot next to the stove, fed with a bottle until big enough to join the rest of the herd. In the field with the oaks I pulled down a branch of richly green oak leaves and George ate them.
Then we ran back to the house again, sometimes past my grandpa who was ploughing a field of sweet potatoes, or sometimes past my grandma who was choosing vegetables for dinner. Green beans, maybe. She was a good cook. When I was back in the house, tracking in sand on my bare feet across the pebble patterned linoleum, the radio was on and grandma was doing kitchen things.
Do little kids ever remember what their mothers and grandmothers did in the kitchen or is it just with our grown up experience that we know? She would have been washing dishes, cleaning vegetables, getting lunch ready for grandpa, sweeping the floor, having a break and sitting in the rocking chair by the phone, talking to her older sister who lived in town. And I would see her on the phone and know I could start getting snacks and things out of the cupboards that are usually restricted. Grandma had to keep covering the mouthpiece on the phone to tell me to go outside and play.
But at a certain time each day–probably nine o’clock, Grandma listened to the radio while she did her kitchen things. She had a notebook or scraps of paper on the countertop because she was listening to a radio show called Kitchen Klatter and it was frequently a note-taking event. Kitchen Klatter was a Midwestern homemaking show, where a mother and daughter talked about recipes, tips for cleaning and sewing I think. I figure it was mostly recipes because that’s the part I benefited the most from. I didn’t hang around to listen any longer than it took to get the pitcher of lemonade out of the fridge, pour a drink, drink it, and put the sweating pitcher back in the fridge. The house was warm enough for a cold pitcher of lemonade to start sweating almost immediately, because warm breezes and shade from the big old trees cooled the house, not air conditioning.
Anyway, Grandma often wrote down recipes from the Kitchen Klatter radio show. I only have two that she copied down, both for different versions of ginger cake. That cake will appear on here at some point. But for now, I will share another with you that for some reason I don’t have her handwritten copy of. It was the first cake I ever made and we made it together, she was marvelling at the ingredients and I was marvelling at the taste of the batter. Don’t try it. You’ll never have enough left for the cake.
We waited till the heat of the day had passed and the warm breezes coming in through the big screened windows had cooled enough that putting the oven on didn’t matter. The lights in the house on, Grandpa cleaning the field dust off, an episode of All Creatures Great and Small about to start—our favourite series, and sounds from Brownie outside on the porch as she circled and curled up again in her favourite spot under the old bench. I stood on a stool next to Grandma, both with our aprons on, making cake in the summer evening.
I cannot one hundred per cent guarantee this is a cake from Kitchen Klatter, but I guess there’s a pretty good chance that’s where Grandma got the recipe. This is another dairy free cake, for those of you interested. Just like the angel food cake I made in November for my birthday. And egg free. I suppose that’s why it’s called a Crazy Cake. Try it for the pleasantly unusual tangy chocolate taste, if nothing else!
You can convert this to cupcakes I suppose but I just use it as a super quick and easy table cake recipe. Nothing fancy, but pretty tasty and pleases most people. Don’t bother with icing or you may as well have made a regular chocolate cake because you’ll lose the unique flavour.
Yep, that's an old cake pan. Perfect for Crazy Cake.
Crazy Cake
Ingredients
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 Tablespoons vinegar
6 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup cold water.
Method
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Sift the dry ingredients directly into an 8×8 inch square cake pan. Stir them around the make sure they’re well mixed.
Make three holes in these dry ingredients. In the first hole pour the vanilla, then the vinegar in the next, then the oil in the third. Pour the cold water over all.
Stir it all together with a fork. When the batter is smooth, it’s ready to go in the oven! Bake for about 25-30 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
You have to Login