Cockeyed Cake



This is one of the immortal, beloved recipes from the original, groundbreaking I Hate to Cook Book (1960) by Ruth Eleanor "Peg" Bracken (1918 - 2007), author of breezy, culturally subversive books starting with the aforementioned volume that asked "Suppose a cookbook emphasised ease of preparation?", and broke all sales records when it turned out the answer was "Heck, yes." Being a counterculture figure before it was cool to be one, she lived in what was later the hippie haven of Bolinas, California.

Her most-famous book, the one cited, almost didn't get published, because six publishing firms' acquisition editors summarily turned down any attempt to make cooking easy, on grounds that "women regard cooking as sacred" and would never buy it. The seventh was a female editor at Harcourt Brace, who joyfully picked it up, and it then sold three million copies in the 1960s alone, and keeps on going.

Yields:

about 10 servings

Time Required:

Ingredients:

Preparation:

Put your sifted flour back in the sifter, add to it cocoa, baking soda, sugar, and salt, and sift this right into a greased cake pan, about 9" x 9" x 2". Now you make three grooves, or holes, in this dry mixture.

Into one groove, 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.

Good Old Confectioner's Sugar Frosting:

Sift two cups of confectioner's sugar with a dash of salt. Then, add a teaspoon of vanilla, and beat in enough cream to make it the right consistency to spread.

Cook's Notes:

As with every other Peg Bracken recipe I've tried, this one is incredibly tolerant of substitutions and modifications: A friend, Eugene H (FOMS)1, writes: "I've added fruit (banana, cherry, strawberry, orange), grated beets, zucchini, pumpkin, plantain, chocolate chips, cocoa nibs, toffee bits, nuts, zests.... I make it, frequently, without cocoa, substituting various spices (most often what people call pumpkin pie spices) and adding raisins/dried cranberries/dried cherries. Bonus: It's vegan. The vegans who can't remember the last time they had cake at a pot-luck seem to be legion." (And a different commenter suggests that her version with 1 Tbsp. of apple cider vinegar gives the recipe a nice zing.)

Eugene adds: "More cocoa works well, too: I've put in six heaping tablespoons. I usually use Dutch-process (alkalized) cocoa, and even some black cocoa."

"Others may disagree, but I say, for pity's sake, don't use cake flour: My experience is that cake flour is bad for cake flavour. It seems mostly to make cake more architecturally sound for decorating. Use plain old all-purpose."

"I don't think that the batter takes much mixing: a few swift strokes. Some lumps is OK. I usually take a bit longer, more like ten minutes, because I mix the batter in a bowl and oil, and lightly flour the cake pan for ease of getting the finished product out without crumbling."

Given the base recipe's omission of eggs, milk, and butter, ingredients scarce during WWII, there's widespread speculation Peg Bracken adapted it from a much older, wartime recipe. And, indeed, very similar recipes can be found under names like "War Cake", "Depression-Era Chocolate Cake", and "Poor Man's Cake".

Some bakers like to add frosting, which of course would tend to involve butter and possibly also milk, hence no longer vegan.

Another baker (Judy) advises: "Readers should be alerted to let this cake sit overnight, if possible; the ingredients need time to become acquainted. It is scrumptious on the second and third days, preferably with a simple topping of melted butter, brown sugar, cream, and chopped nuts."

With fond regret, I omitted Peg Bracken's, brief, witty comments accompanying this recipe as originally published, to avoid even de-minimus copyright violation. So: Buy the book, folks. It's endlessly useful, and amusing.

1Eugene explains "FOMS" as a coinage meaning "Fear of Missing Something" (slightly predating FOMO) that he long ago adopted as his online handle.

Collected and re-published at http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/recipes/cockeye-cake.html by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> on Mar. 21, 2024. Individual recipes are free from copyright. Share and enjoy!

(If I have any copyright title in my own very minor contributions to this page — not my intention — they were created in 2024 by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. I have thereby waived all copyright, compilation copyright, and related or neighbouring rights to this work. This work is published from: United States of America.)