DEPRESSION-ERA CHOCOLATE CAKE RECIPE
This recipe was adapted from one that I found in an old Reminisce magazine several years ago. I’m not sure anymore where the magazine with the original recipe is, but it was one that had been submitted by one of the magazine’s readers, and it is a simple, old-fashioned recipe.
This Depression era chocolate cake does not call for any butter, milk, or eggs, allowing for those who did not have access to these ingredients or could not afford them to still have a cake for special occasions. This cake also would have been perfect for the winter season when access to butter, milk, and eggs would have been much more limited.
DEPRESSION ERA CHOCOLATE CAKE RECIPE:
This cake is a rich, fudgy kind of cake. It’s not one of those fluffy cakes with no substance that falls apart as soon as you put your fork in it. This cake is for the serious dark chocolate lovers out there š
Ingredients:
3 cups flour (Either spelt or unbleached all-purpose or a combination of both)
2 cups organic cane sugar
1 tsp sea salt (you can find my favorite salt here)
6 Tbs cocoa powder
2 tsp aluminum-free baking soda
1/2 tsp ground ginger
12 Tbs (3/4 cup) coconut oil, melted and cooled
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 Tbs coffee (freshly brewed or leftover)
2 cups room temperature water
2 Tbs apple cider vinegar
* The powdered ginger and coffee are optional. I like to add them just because they give the chocolate a little more “depth of flavor” as professional bakers like to say. You can’t taste either the ginger or coffee, but they enhance the chocolate flavor. And if you’ve ever tried making your own homemade vinegar, you could use that in place of the store bought apple cider vinegar too.
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease and flour two 9 inch round cake pans or one 13 x 9 inch pan.
In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt, cocoa powder, baking soda, and ginger, stirring to mix well.
Add melted and cooled coconut oil, vanilla, and lukewarm water. Stir well to combine.
Add coffee and apple cider vinegar, stirring well to make sure there are no lumps in the batter. The batter will foam up a bit as the baking soda reacts with the acid in the vinegar and the coffee.
Pour batter into cake pans and bake at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (If you use a 13 x 9 pan rather than two cake pans, the cake might take a bit longer to bake through.)
Note: Because this cake calls for apple cider vinegar and water, it would probably work well if you wanted to use the soaked-grain method and use whole wheat flour soaked in the acidic water. I haven’t tried this yet because I didn’t want to wait for the batter to soak overnight before baking my cake, but if I were to try this, I would mix the apple cider vinegar and water together and mix it with 2 1/2 cups of flour (I think the full 3 cups would make the batter a bit too thick for soaking.) Then, I would cover the bowl and let it soak for 12-24 hours, and then add the rest of the ingredients as directed above. If anybody gives this method a try, leave a comment below to let us all know how it turned out!