Wartime Vegan Recipes

Since I’ve been forced to look for vegan baking recipes, I’ve stumbled upon a “wartime” chocolate cake recipe that is classically (but accidentally) vegan. During wartime rations, butter, milk, and eggs were hard to come by so people were forced to change the way they baked. It's also called wacky chocolate cake, depression cake, etc and it's delicious. It uses water, vegetable oil, and vinegar to give it lift. It’s moist, chocolatey, and really pretty surprising that it’s vegan.

But, in preparing for Thanksgiving, I stumbled upon a new wartime recipe (originally in Better Homes and Gardens in 1944)- Brownie Pudding Cake. It’s not vegan because it uses milk, BUT there’s no eggs or butter. And I know that the less things I have to substitute the better, so I gave it a try, simply using oat milk. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a pudding cake before, but it was a wild process to make. I made a cake batter, put it in the pan, then poured a boiling water, cocoa powder, sugar mixture on top. When I read the directions I thought it would be just like a little bit of water on top to keep it moist, but it’s 1 ½ cups of boiling water and it completely covered the cake batter. I was skeptical with how it would turn out- but just like the recipe said, when it bakes, the cake layer rises to the top leaving a pudding layer on the bottom.

A cake where you have to spoon off the pudding bottom? Where have you been all my life?

I made mine the day before our holiday get together and the pudding layer wasn’t as big as promised, but all in all, it was delicious.  An extremely easy, extremely chocolatey, extremely good vegan chocolate cake? Yes, please.