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Cockeyed Cake

Photo: Tucker Shaw

BY The Editors

PUBLISHED April 4, 2024

I saw [this recipe] in a newspaper years ago, meant to clip it, didn’t, and finally bumped into the cake itself in the apartment of a friend of mine. It was dark, rich, moist, and chocolatey, and she said it took no more than five minutes to mix it up. So I tried it, and, oddly enough, mine, too, was dark, rich, moist and chocolatey. — Peg Bracken

 

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This recipe was published alongside Tucker Shaw’s piece “Raise Your Hand if You Hate to Cook.”

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Cockeyed Cake

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Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups sifted flour
  • 3 tablespoons cocoa
  • 1 teaspoon soda
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 5 tablespoons cooking oil
  • 1 tablespoon vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 cup cold water

Instructions

Put your sifted flour back in the sifter, add to it the cocoa, soda, sugar, and salt, and sift this right into a greased square cake pan, about 9 x 9 x 2 inches. Now you make three grooves, or holes, in the dry mixture. Into one, pour the oil, into the next, the vinegar, into the next, the vanilla. Now pour the cold water over it all. You’ll feel like you’re making mud pies now, but beat it with a spoon until it’s nearly smooth and you can’t see the flour. Bake it at 350°F for half an hour.

— Recipe from The I Hate to Cook Book

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