tasty tuesday: best chocolate (cup)cakes

The recipe I'm about to share with you is very near and dear to my heart.  I discovered it many years ago when I was just starting to really get into baking more, and made it mostly due to the name..."Wacky Cake".  Weird, right?

Well, that turned out to be one of my best decisions I've ever made.  Wacky Cake is now our go to chocolate cake recipe, and hasn't ever failed us yet!  It's moist and fluffy and rich, and completely no-fuss, which I love.  One interesting thing about this cake is that it doesn't contain any eggs....so, as long as you use vegan margarine (oil works well too), this recipe can be vegan.  I have a couple of friends that are vegans (or can't eat eggs!), and I love having such a good recipe that works for them too!

Chocolate Cake

(adapted from Our Treasured Recipes by Central Heights MB Church)

Ingredients:

3 cups Flour

2 cups Sugar

2 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Salt

2/3 cup Cocoa

1 TBSP Vanilla

2 TBSP Vinegar

3/4 cup Margarine (melted)

2 cups Warm Water

Instructions:

1) Mix together all dry ingredients; then pour all wet ingredients over top and mix until moist.

2) Pour batter into 9x13 pan /or 2 round pans /or cupcake tins (makes about 24-30 cupcakes)

3) Bake at 350: for 35-40 minutes for cake [or until a toothpick comes out clean] OR:  for 20-25 minutes for cupcakes.

The original recipe says to make three wells in your dry ingredients, and then fill each of them with vanilla, the melted margarine, and the vinegar.  Then, you pour the warm water over top, and mix together.  While I'm assuming this is the "wacky" part of the cake recipe, it doesn't matter if you just mix it all together. 

However, I still kind of like making the wells....

Your batter will be really runny....so don't freak out!  That means you did it right!

Jordyn and I usually use an ice cream scoop to make scooping the batter into the cupcakes tins easier, but you can also fill a large glass measuring cup and pour the batter in!

We like pretty tall cupcakes, so we usually fill our tins about 3/4 of the way full.  If you'd like slightly smaller cupcakes you don't have to add as much...just keep an eye on them in the oven, as they'll bake a bit faster!

Once the cupcakes had COMPLETELY cooled, I whipped up some basic butter cream icing, tinted it pink with a little bit of pink gel food colouring!  I finished them off with the most darling gold stars that I got for Christmas from my mom....she knows me so well!

This is such a quick recipe to whip up, so give it a try, and let us know how it goes!

Cupcake days are the best kind of days.

-kelsey