Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Peg Bracken's Cockeyed Chocolate Cake (1960)

"This is a famous recipe, I believe, but I haven't the faintest idea who invented it. I saw it 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. My own timing was five and a half minutes, but that includes hunting for the vinegar."
  • 1-1/2 cups sifted flour
  • 3 tbspns cocoa
  • 1 tspn baking soda
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 tspn salt
  • 5 tbspns cooking oil
  • 1 tbspn vinegar
  • 1 tspn vanilla
  • 1 cup cold water
  • Good Old Confectioner's Sugar Frosting (below)
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 inches. 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 degrees 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. 

More "Lost" Chocolate Cake Recipes
Kentucky Bourbon Fudge Cake (1983)
Mahogany Cake with Sour Cream (1936)

(Origin - "The I Hate to Cook Book" by Peg Bracken, 1960. NOTE - Author Peg Bracken was a comedy and advertising writer who wrote this best-seller "for everyone, men and women alike, who wants to get from cooking hour to cocktail hour in as little time as possible."  This hilarious, yet excellent, cookbook sold more 3 million copies in the 1960s.)

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