Wacky Cake

First off, please forgive the pictures in this post. My camera is sporting some sort of digital disease and my photo editing skills are deeply lacking, but I didn't want to leave you with nothing to look at. With that said, we enter a world where chickens are of no use to us. Let me explain.

Running out of eggs last week sent me on a journey through wacky cake land. If you've never heard of it, wacky cake uses baking soda and vinegar for leavening instead of eggs. It's not the best cake in the world, but it's not bad - it certainly does the trick - especially as a vehicle for gobs and gobs of frosting. It's also a great base for a vegan cake.

So last week I had a bunch of ingredients I needed to use up (dulce de leche, chocolate ganache and a cookie crunch topping that fell off of some unsuccessful cookie bars) and no eggs. I remembered wacky cake and looked up a recipe for a simple chocolate version.

I baked it up and after it cooled slathered on a very thick layer of dulce de leche frosting. Then I sprinkled as much of the cookie crumb topping as I could fit on top, drizzled it with more dulce de leche and then drizzled on my left over chocolate ganache. Although impressive looking, the flavor was good, but not spectacular.

This is what was left after I took a fork to half of the cake.

There is something quite happy and fun about taking a fork to a whole cake and just digging in. It's like a lot of things that you think are very important are suddenly thrown out the window and you find yourself smiling about it. Don't take that analogy too far.

This week I got inspired and decided to use up some overripe bananas in another wacky cake recipe. I frosted it with a cinnamon scented peanut butter frosting and topped it with a few banana chips so as not to leave the cake too naked.

I now find myself in a wacky cake frenzy contemplating the endless wacky cake possibilities. If I really think about it, it's the perfect cake for me as I mostly care about frosting anyway and if I ever had to live in a world without chickens, I'd be okay.