What makes chocolate wacky cake so unique?

There are few desserts as classic as a delicious chocolate cake. Chocolate cake is delicious on its own, with ice cream or made into delicious cake pops. While there is always the classic chocolate cake or the 2 layer chocolate cake, you can also opt for variations of a chocolate cake recipe, like a German chocolate cake or the unique wacky chocolate cake .

Like a standard chocolate cake, wacky cake contains typical flour, sugar, oil and cocoa powder. However, it’s what this cake is missing that makes it truly unique: eggs. Unlike your standard chocolate cake, wacky cake doesn’t contain eggs and instead uses other leavening agents to achieve its moist, cake-like texture. Yet the lack of eggs isn’t the only thing that sets a wacky cake apart from a regular chocolate cake. Here are some other unique ingredients that go into making a wacky cake and make it special, as well as a bit of this cake’s distinctive history that also helps set the dessert apart.

Read more: 11 Mistakes to Avoid When Cooking with Chocolate

How Wacky Cake is Different

The biggest difference between a wacky cake and a classic chocolate cake is the ingredients. For one thing, as mentioned before, the wacky cake doesn’t contain any eggs at all. Instead, this cake uses a combination of vinegar and baking soda to help this cake become moist. Although most recipes call for white vinegar, you can also use apple cider vinegar. Either way, the vinegar is essential because its reaction with the baking soda will replace the missing eggs.

Another key difference between wacky cake and standard chocolate cakes is that it does not contain butter or milk. Instead, you’ll use oil for the fat and water as the liquid to add to the dough. Thanks to these key ingredient swaps and the absence of eggs in the recipe, this is also a vegan cake. Although on the outside, a wacky cake may look like a classic chocolate cake recipe, it’s actually quite unique thanks to these ingredients.

The Story Behind Wacky Chocolate Cake

Beyond the ingredients it contains, the history of Wacky Cake also makes it a unique dessert. Although no one seems to know the exact date this cake was invented, it is widely believed to have been created between World War II and the Great Depression. At that time, ingredients were scarce. This was partly due to government rationing efforts and partly to the economic depression that followed the war.

Either way, households needed to find a way to make treats without resorting to rare ingredients. Because the wacky cake required no eggs or butter, this made it a treat that people could enjoy even when certain items were hard to find. Plus, since ingredients like oil tend to be cheaper than butter, this also made the cake more affordable to bake.

Today, thanks to its unique history, the wacky cake is sometimes called depression cake. It also goes by other names, such as cockeyed cake, crazy cake, or war cake. Whatever you want to call it, the next time you’re craving a chocolate dessert, try making this unique cake.

Read the original article on Daily Meal.