"The '80s came through, and fads completely changed," Olver says. "People started getting more complicated in the '80s, and everything's cyclical. ... In the '80s, you would be making a molten lava cake and a Mississippi mud pie. You had your tall desserts. Now [the Wacky Cake] is brilliant, because it's simpler and people are looking back."
Now the cake reappears on allrecipes.com as Vegan Chocolate Cake, and on the vegan recipe blog Where's the Revolution?, where writer Bahar Zaker suggests a topping of chocolate chips melted with a bit of soy milk.
"If someone asks me for a simple vegan recipe, I love giving them Wacky Cake, because it doesn't have any ingredients that would scare them off," Zaker says.
Jack Bishop, editorial director of America's Test Kitchen, which tested and published a version of the cake for last year's book America's Best Lost Recipes, says the cake fits the needs of today's economically stressed cooks. Without eggs, milk or butter, it's inexpensive to make - and quick.
"You almost always have these ingredients on hand," Bishop says. "There's nothing really perishable in the cake. It's a recipe you can bake out of a decently stocked pantry."
It also can be turned into something sophisticated. The new book Pacific Northwest Wining & Dining by Braiden Rex-Johnson includes a recipe from Paul Vandenberg, co-owner of a small Yakima Valley, Wash., winery, for Chipotle Chocolate Cake.
It's basically a Wacky Cake with wine instead of vinegar, and it gets sweet spark from the combination of ground chipotle and cinnamon. Drink it with a fruity red wine, and serve with whipped cream.
Many of the Wacky Cake recipes we received for the Recipe Finder column were almost identical to the one my mother wrote down more than 30 years ago.
But one, sent by Phyllis Morris of Catonsville, caught my eye. By increasing the amounts of ingredients (though not really changing the proportions), her recipe could be made in a tube pan, lined with parchment paper to help unmold the moist cake.
The prospect of a fancier Cockeyed-Wacky Cake was intriguing.
Morris' recipe worked beautifully for me, in a bundt pan and in a 9-inch springform pan. It worked as cupcakes. It worked with a couple of tablespoons of brewed coffee thrown in, which deepened the already rich chocolate flavor. It is my new Wacky master recipe.
Morris says she, too, made the cake with her mother. Ever frugal, her mother used a recycled brown paper bag instead of parchment to line the pan.
