Climate baking is a one-bowl chocolate cake

that's a two-in-one dessert plan for Gal/Valentine's Day

The tiny FOMO chef who inhabits my body snapped to attention this week. If I were home in Brooklyn instead of traveling, you see, I’d be going to a Galentine’s shindig this weekend. So naturally, tiny FOMO chef planned out exactly what he/I’d bring to the party he/I won’t be attending. 

Luckily for all of us, he’s an efficient little Frenchman (with a hell of a mustache), so his plan is a two-in-one recipe that covers both Galentine’s and Valentine’s Day, and comes with a heartening message, to boot: Climate baking can be as simple as a one-bowl cake made with ingredients that are probably already in your pantry.

Part of my whole schtick is that there are a bunch of ways to bake for a healthier climate and a more resilient food system — from recreating kitschy classics like confetti cake with low-carbon ingredients to turning dull fruit into granita to embracing the perennial grains that could overhaul row-crop agriculture. And there’s another that’s even easier: Crazy cake. 

Crazy cake — aka wacky cake or cockeyed cake — is perhaps the most famous of the eggless, dairy-less cake recipes that emerged from the thriftiness and wartime rationing of mid-century America. The raisin-spice Depression cake ranks a tasty but distant second.

Crazy cake’s simplicity earned it a spot in my mom’s family’s dessert rotation when she was growing up. It calls for just eight shelf-stable ingredients and takes about 30 minutes to prepare and bake. It gets its rise from baking soda and vinegar (not unlike those sixth-grade volcanoes), and in some forms is mixed right in the cake pan — no bowl required. Hence the crazy thing.

Today, it’s my back-pocket cake recipe because it’s deliciously moist (an advantage of using oil rather than butter) and just happens to be low-carbon. I can also always find a recipe variation to fit whatever’s in my pantry: This one by Anne-Marie Bonneau incorporates leftover sourdough starter, this one uses a spare cup of coffee to underline the chocolate flavor; others skip cocoa powder entirely and go for a vanilla or lemon flavor rather than chocolate.

Crazy cake can also pull double dessert duty. Tiny FOMO chef, in all his creative agony, decided that Galentine’s Day should be observed with little heart cakes stamped out by a cookie cutter and topped with tahini frosting. That left him with a lot of leftover cake scraps, and a vision for a low-effort Valentine’s Day dessert: Trifle. 

As Tamar Adler taught us when she shared her recipe last fall, trifle is little more than cake cubes — stale or not — whipped cream, and alcohol, which makes it a cinch to prepare on a weeknight. It also looks remarkably charming, in a geologically layered sort of way, when served in stemless wine glasses.

Best of all, it’s an exercise in imagining the culinary lives that odds-and-ends ingredients could live instead of languishing in pre-trashcan purgatory. As tiny FOMO chef always says, in his nearly incomprehensible accent, one holiday’s cake scraps are another holiday’s dessert prep.

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Recipe: Chocolate-tahini heart cakes

I’ve tried a lot of crazy cake recipes, and my mom’s still wins out. The only changes I’ve made to it are to bake it in a 9x13 pan instead of an 8x8 to achieve a thinner cake that yields more mini-cakes, to add a tahini frosting, and to note the substitutions that have worked for me. The original method for a crazy cake calls for poking three wells in the dry ingredients, adding one wet ingredient to each well, then pouring the water over it all — but I’ve found it’s just as effective to add all the wet ingredients at once, so that’s what I do. When you’re stamping out the mini cakes, use a metal cookie cutter rather than a plastic one, since metal cuts more neatly. 

Yields 6 mini cakes

Crazy cake

• 1 ½ cups (195g) all-purpose flour (I subbed in 10% oat flour by weight, as per Rose Wilde’s advice last week, to great effect)

• 1 cup (200g) sugar

• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• ½ teaspoon salt

• 5 tablespoons olive oil or any neutral oil

• 1 tablespoon white, apple cider, or rice vinegar

• 1 teaspoon vanilla

• 1 cup water

Tahini frosting

• 1 ¼ cups powdered sugar

• 4 tablespoons (½ stick) vegan or dairy butter, softened to room temperature

• 1 tablespoon tahini

• 2 teaspoons non-dairy milk

• Generous pinch of salt

• Demerara sugar, for dipping

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease the bottom and sides of a 9x13 pan, and cut a piece of parchment paper so it lines the bottom of the pan snugly and has a little overhang on two of the sides. (You’ll use those as a handle to remove the cake once it’s cool.) Press the paper flush into the corners of the pan, and then grease the top of the paper. 

Make the batter: In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients all at once and whisk until a smooth batter forms. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 20-24 minutes, or until the center of the cake springs back when poked gently with a finger. Allow the cake to cool completely. 

Cut out the hearts: Using the parchment paper handles, gently remove the cake from the pan and transfer it to a cutting board. Cut out shapes as desired with a cookie cutter (metal cutters are preferable because they tear the cake less than plastic ones), and reserve scraps for a Valentine’s Day trifle. (Or store in the freezer for future trifle.)

Make the frosting: Place softened butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until smooth. Add the tahini and salt and mix again until incorporated. Add the powdered sugar a half cup at a time, mixing well after each addition and scraping down the sides as needed. Add the non-dairy milk one teaspoon at a time until you have a soft, easily spreadable frosting. 

Decorate the cakes: Frost the cakes using a knife, working delicately but without a single iota of stress, since you’ll cover the frosting with demerara sugar anyway. Pour some demerara sugar on a small plate and gently press the cakes, frosting-side down, against the sugar.

Cakes keep covered at room temperature for up to three days. Turn cake scraps into trifle.