Chocolate Oil Cake

Yesterday morning I randomly decided that my kids and I would make my husband a cake. My kids love baking with me and even though I really don't enjoy baking with them (they are messy and everything takes ten times longer) I still do it because they enjoy it.

My go to cake recipe is for Chocolate Oil Cake. I first made this when I was breastfeeding my son who had a milk allergy. Going dairy free was very hard for me but I refused to stop breastfeeding so I found many recipes that I could safely eat. This recipe was a godsend as it tastes wonderful and made me feel better about not being able to eat many of my favorite foods. Anyways, onto the recipe!

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar

3 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 cups water

1 cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Here are my "helpers"- it's great that they have such short attention spans as they got bored after a bit and wandered off to do their own thing. Thank goodness.

Mix together the sugar, flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa.

Add in the water, vegetable oil, vinegar and vanilla. The batter will be very runny and to be honest, won't taste that great. Don't worry- it will taste great once it comes out of the oven!

Pour the batter into a 9x13 inch pan and bake in an oven preheated to 350 degrees for about 40 minutes. The cake is done once a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Waiting, waiting, waiting for the cake to be done. I kept trying to explain to them that it was for daddy and they would have to wait until after dinner to eat it but somehow children just hear what they want to hear and nothing else.

Yum, the finished product. I used this recipe for the icing and it came out pretty good (I halved the recipe). No, it was not anyone's birthday but who doesn't love blowing out candles on a cake?