Molly Cake - No Recipe Required with Lesley Taylor
This cake goes by many names: Depression Cake, Wacky Cake, and the name our family always knew it by: Molly Cake. I have no idea where that name came from, but maybe someone named Molly gave the recipe to my aunt. I have to admit that when it was a staple in our family as a child, I didn’t love it. I always felt like it tasted “watery.” That was probably my way of saying that it wasn’t rich enough or buttery enough. Traditionally, it was served with a simple white buttercream, likely flavoured with almond extract (which I also didn’t use to like.)
As is typical, my tastes have changed over the years, and I’ve since come to love this vegan cake (that came from a time before vegan baking was even a thing!) It probably started back in the depression or war times when eggs, milk, and butter were expensive or hard to come by. And seeing as how expensive those ingredients are today, this is a very economical cake. It’s also a really quick cake to make since you only need one bowl and don’t need a stand mixer or even a hand mixer! One bowl, whisk, spatula, measuring cups (dry and wet,) measuring spoons, and a cake pan or muffin tins. That’s it! I’ve made some adjustments to the original recipe: addition of the espresso powder, and doubling the amount of vanilla extract, both of those things helping to deepen the flavour a bit.
In the spirit of “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus,” I’ll get to the recipe right away, then expand a bit in the notes below the recipe for those who are interested.
3 cups / 450g flour
2 cups / 400g sugar
2 tsp / 9g baking powder
2 tsp / 12g baking soda
1 tsp / 6g salt
½ cup / 65g cocoa
2 tsp / 10g espresso powder
2 cups / 475mL boiling water
2/3 cup / 150ml vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsps vinegar (either white or apple cider)
Preheat your oven to 350F / 180C. Prepare your baking pans by lightly greasing them with oil or non-dairy butter (if you want to keep the cake vegan) or line 24 muffin tins if you want to make cupcakes. If you’re going to be removing the cake from the tins to frost and serve, I highly recommend lining the bottom of the pans with greased parchment paper.
Put the kettle on to boil. While that’s happening, measure out all your dry ingredients as they are grouped above:
In one large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and whisk together to ensure even distribution of ingredients
In a large (4 cups / 1L) measuring cup, add the cocoa and espresso powder
In a 1-cup/250mL measuring cup measure out the oil, then add the vanilla extract to that
Add the boiling water to the cocoa/espresso powders and mix well with a whisk, ensuring all the cocoa has dissolved. Add this to the bowl full of dry ingredients, then add the oil/vanilla and mix it all together with a whisk.
Add the vinegar and mix thoroughly. Watch while the batter starts to foam a little bit. Divide the batter into two 8” or 9” round or square baking pans, one Bundt pan, or into 24 muffin tins.
Bake cakes for about 30 minutes, cupcakes for 22 minutes, or until the cake is set. I used two 8” square pans and the cakes took exactly 30 minutes. Oven temperatures vary, so your cooking time may also vary. It’s better to slightly over-bake a cake than to under-bake it. Let cool, then frost as desired (or just eat it as is!)
Why vinegar? Well, I’m sure you’re familiar with what happens when you mix baking soda and vinegar together – you get a lot of foam, and carbon dioxide is released. This helps the cake rise, but it also helps to neutralize the baking soda. If you didn’t add it (and I did forget once) the finished product would still rise, but you’d probably taste the baking soda, which tastes slightly metallic. You can get the same effect by adding any other wet or dry acid to the batter (lemon juice, buttermilk, cream of tartar, yogurt, apple sauce, etc.)
Which brings me to my next note, baking soda vs baking powder: as mentioned above, baking soda is a base (alkaline) that reacts with acids in the batter. The effect it has in baking is the batter will spread out, like in cookies. Baking powder, on the other hand, makes things rise (up.) So that’s why some recipes call for both, and others call for one OR the other. They are not interchangeable. Baking powder does have baking soda in it, but it also has cream of tartar, which is an acid that helps to neutralize the baking soda (as mentioned above.) It’s also “double- acting,” which means that the first reaction happens when you add the liquid, and the second reaction happens when it’s baked.
Oil vs. Butter: besides being much cheaper and being plant-based, oil also creates a different texture in cakes, especially when refrigerated as it will firm up again when cooled, producing a firmer cake. One plant-based exception would be coconut oil since, like butter, it is solid at room temperature. Personally, I prefer oil-based cakes because I like a lighter texture in my cakes. To get a light texture in a cake made with butter, you have to cream the butter to inject some air into it. Usually this is done by creaming butter with sugar, but there is another method called “reverse creaming” where the butter and flour are mixed together before adding the wet ingredients. I also like this method and will likely discuss it in a future newsletter.
Cocoa: there are many types with varying pH (acid/alkaline) levels, so it does matter which type you use. Plain old cocoa powder (e.g., Fry’s) is also called “natural/natural process” cocoa powder. It’s fairly light brown in colour and is readily available in grocery and bulk stores. With a pH of about 5.8 it is acidic and will react with baking soda in a recipe. This is what I use in most recipes, and unless otherwise noted in a recipe, this is what you should use. Dutch process (aka, alkalized) cocoa powder has a neutral pH of 7, so it won’t react with baking soda. For this reason, you have to add a bit more of something acidic for your cake to rise properly. So, if you use Dutch process cocoa powder in this recipe, you’ll have to increase the vinegar slightly. I haven’t tested this, so I don’t know the exact amount. There are also Red and Black cocoa powders that are even more alkalized (i.e., have a higher pH) than Dutch process. These are often used in frostings and fillings where you want a really deep chocolate flavour, and where you don’t want the acid/alkaline ratio of your cake batter to be affected. Bottom line, you can’t always substitute one type of cocoa for another in baked goods like cakes that need to rise (unless you’re a really keen chemist who can figure out how to adapt the other acid/alkaline ingredients in the recipe.)
I alluded to frosting the cake as you prefer, but I also want to give you some ideas. A simple buttercream frosting (butter or a plant-based butter alternative whipped with icing sugar, a pinch of salt (unless using salted butter,) milk, cream or non-dairy creamer, and almond or vanilla extract) is a perfect, simple frosting for this cake, whether you frost it right in the cake pan (as we always did) or make a frosted layer cake out of it. In terms of ratios, I usually start with 1 part butter to 6 parts icing sugar (by volume.) Yes, I know I’m supposed to weigh things, but I usually just wing it when making buttercream frosting. I did weigh my sugar in this case (just for you, dear readers) and it worked out to ½ cup/125g of butter, 3 cups/420g of icing sugar, and 4 Tbsp of cream/milk, added 1 tablespoon at a time until the desired consistency is reached. That would be enough to frost the top of 2 cakes, but if you’re frosting the tops, sides, and insides of a layer cake you’ll need to double or triple that.
For this cake, I opted to make an “Irish Cream” flavoured frosting, so I added 2 Tbsp Irish whiskey, 2 tsp clear vanilla extract, 1 tsp almond extract, ½ tsp espresso powder and ½ tsp cocoa powder to the basic frosting above.
In a future newsletter I’ll write about different styles of buttercream, including Swiss Meringue and Italian Meringue, both of which can be made vegan!
Wait until the cake has fully cooled before frosting it. Keep in an air-tight container at room temperature for a few days, or in the fridge for another day or two after that (assuming it lasts that long!) I find that cake tastes better at room temperature, but I know some people are die hard “cold cake” people. Which are you? Tell me in the comments!
I couldn’t resist cutting myself a piece of cake as an afternoon snack. Bon appetit!
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