No problem if you don’t happen to have any eggs, milk or butter in the house yet still want to make a moist, chocolatey cake.
I’ve been making a version of this Jiffy Devil’s Food Cake since I was young. It’s still my go-to chocolate cake recipe because it’s so darn easy to make and tastes delicious. Who needs a cake mix when you can whip up this cake batter so quickly?
And if you don’t happen to have any eggs, milk or butter in the house, no problem. They aren’t needed for this recipe and you won’t miss them: this cake is moist and chocolatey.
Kitchener, Ontario Culinary Historian, Carolyn Blackstock, says she thinks of this type of recipe as a “winter time cake.” She explains that dairy- and egg-free recipes were popular during the winter months before farms had electricity. Without artificial light, hens don’t lay as many eggs during the short days of winter. Butter and milk also tended to be in short supply during winter months when cows were often “dry” (a rest period prior to spring calving.) Or, cows may not have been kept through the winter months due to a lack of stored feed.
An internet search of egg — and dairy — free cake recipes turns up other similar recipes with names like Depression Cake or Wartime Cake, popular at times when eggs were presumably either expensive or less available.
And if you’re wondering where the name “Devil’s Food” Cake came from, Wikipedia has this to say: “. . . it is difficult to precisely qualify what distinguishes devil's food from the more standard chocolate cake, though it traditionally has more chocolate than a regular chocolate cake, making it darker.”
If you are interested in historical cooking, you can read about Blackstock’s daily adventures cooking from the 1906 Berlin (now Kitchener) Cookbook on her blog: http://366dayswiththeberlincookbook.wordpress.com.
Jiffy Devil’s Food Cake
INGREDIENTS
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
3 Tbsp. cocoa
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 cup cold water
1 Tbsp. white vinegar
1 cup sugar
⅓ cup canola oil
1 tsp. vanilla
METHOD
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium sized bowl, sift together the cocoa, flour and baking soda. Add the sugar and salt and stir. Add the vinegar to the water and then pour into the dry ingredients along with the vegetable oil and vanilla. Mix until blended. (I often do this by hand and it still turns out fine.) Pour into a greased 8” X 8” square cake pan. Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
When cool, frost with your favourite icing or, if you want to keep it dairy-free, sprinkle with icing sugar, drizzle with melted chocolate chips (dairy-free) or you can make a dairy-free chocolate “butter frosting” using vegan margarine, cocoa and almond milk.
- Helen Lammers-Helps