My expression with my food obsession: I don't know why they call it "Wacky Cake"

Mother’s Day weekend Dale & I went to Prescott with some friends. We had SOOOOOO much fun hanging out, sitting on the deck and GARAGE Saleing! <-Is that a word?

One of our stops was to a flea market that we saw on our way into town. We got a few things, like “ugly baabee”, my new coach purse (for $10) and at one spot, the guy was giving out “free books to moms”

I grabbed a cookbook, go figure! It was The American Heart Association COOKBOOK. From 1973. Complete with Dustcover! Yep! It has some fun recipes!

So we are having our friends over later tonight. I wanted to make something from my “new” cookbook.

I found the recipe for “Wacky Cake” in it. I had all the ingredients since it does not require any egg, or milk, which I had but oh, well.

I decided to look up the recipe. Here is what I found.

From Wikipedia: (I know it is not a reliable source)

Wacky cake is a spongy, cocoa-based cake. It is uniquein that unlike most pastries and desserts, no eggs, butter or milk are used to make the cake batter.

It is commonly believed Wacky Cake may have been created as the result of rationing during World War II, when milk and eggs were scarce. Active ingredients in wacky cake include flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, vegetable oil, white vinegar and vanilla extract.^[1] Some recipes add brewed coffee as an additional ingredient. The cake may be topped with icing or confectioner's sugar, or even served plain. [i]

After I figured out where the recipe came from, I looked online for a recipe and a review. I found a few and combined them along with the suggestions from the reviews.

OK, I made them both. The AHA version and the one I created from my “research”. Well, I forgot which was which and now I don’t know. After tasting them, I figured have decided that I THINK I can tell them apart. One was moister. <- that is a word!

Now, they both had the same amount of oil/margarine, 6Tbls. BUT, the margarine is melted and when melted, it is more than 6Tlbs of oil.

ßSee, the margarine is more than 1/3 cup and the oil is less than 1/3 cup.

That is why one cake was moister. The flavor of the margarine cake was better too!

Now, I don’t really like either cake. The kids, 6 of them, tasted the cakes and they thought both were good but they all preferred the cake made with margarine.

Here is the recipe I liked:

Wacky Cake ~ American Heart Association COOKBOOK

1 ½C Flour

1C Sugar

1t Baking Soda

¼ C Cocoa Powder

1tsp Vanilla Extract

1tsp Vinegar

6Tbl Margarine, Melted

1C Water

Preheat oven to 350*.

Use an ungreased 8-inch cake pan. In the pan, sift and mix together the flour, sugar, soda, and cocoa.

Make 3 wells in the flour mixture. Put vanilla in the first, vinegar in the second, and margarine in the third.

Pour water over all and mix with a fork until ingredients are entirely moist. Bake 30 minutes, or until done.

And the finished Cakes: