"Less Mess" Chocolate Cake

September 28, 2014

Notice how "Less Mess" is in quotations... yeah, this cake doesn't exactly live up to it's name. It does, however, live up to it's deliciousness. Not sure if that even makes sense, but this cake is GOOD.

A few weeks ago when Nick and I visited his parent's house for the weekend (when we made the Easy Pasta Fagioli!) we decided to make this cake for dessert. We love this recipe because it has no milk and no eggs which means no substitutions for us!

In theory, this cake is supposed to make "less mess" because all of the ingredients should be mixed right in the pan you bake it in. Past experience has taught us that this doesn't work exactly as planned... but how does only 1 bowl sound? Pretty good? Cool.

Here's what you need!
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 3 heaping tbsp. unsweetened cocoa
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 6 tbsp. vegetable oil
- 1 tbsp. white vinegar
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1 cup cold water
- Frosting of your choice

Here's what you do!
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease and flour a 9x9" pan.

- Combine all ingredients (except the frosting, of course) in a large bowl. If you feel daring you can go the "less mess" route and combine everything directly in pan, but we prefer the bowl.

- Pour your cake batter into your pan and bake 35-40 minutes.

- After the cake has cooled, frost it with your choice of frosting and eat! Nick's mom made some homemade peanut butter frosting for this baby... so yummy.

If you don't have a 9x9" pan, you can double this recipe and make it in a 9x13" pan, which is what we did. We highly recommend this because MORE CAKE.