Hello. It’s me again, and welcome back to Unorganized Cooking, where I’ll be teaching you how to make a Budget Cake. Now, this cake isn’t really called a budget cake. It’s really similar, if not, a carbon copy to a cake in the 1930s during The Great Depression called the Chocolate Depression Cake, which didn’t have any eggs, milk, or butter, whereas the budget cake is a chocolate cake that doesn’t have any eggs, milk, or butter. Even though this came out more as a brownie and not a cake, I still really liked this cake, the only reason being that I hate butter with a passion. Now, before any of you come mobbing at me, here’s the backstory:

One day my parents took me to IHOP to eat breakfast there, I guess just so I could try it for the first time. When the pancakes finally arrived, I thought that the butter was ice cream, and so I ate that part first. Little did I know, that it was some wicked ruse of the business to serve butter that looks like ice cream. I don’t remember much, but all I know is that I hated it before I was even brainwashed to despise butter. That experience was so horrendous that it made my trip to the ER after eating White Castle for the first time when I was 6 more pleasurable, and I don’t remember the ER trip either due to whatever X-Men chemicals they use in anesthetic, but at least I can’t remember that for the better. Moral of the story, never eat White Castle.

Ingredients

• Baking Soda
• Cocoa
• Sugar
• Vanilla Extract
• Salt
• Canola Oil, even though I’m using Vegetable Oil
• Flour
• Water
• Vinegar/Lemon
• Powdered Sugar
• Optional: Honey

Cooking Time: 45 min.

Instructions:

1. First off are the dry ingredients. Mix 2 cups flour, 2/3 cups sugar, 1/2 cup cocoa, 1 tsp. of baking soda, and a pinch of salt.
2. For the wet ingredients, mix 1 tbsp. of vinegar, but if you’re like me and also hate vinegar, just use barely anything from a lemon, preferably a Meyer since those are sweeter, 1 and 2/3 cups of water, 1/2 cup of canola oil, and 1 and 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract. If you like, you can also add honey to sweeten it. When you stir, it should look like this.
3. Bake for 30-32 minutes at 350 degrees F.
4. While that’s baking, for the frosting, add 3/4 powdered sugar, 1/4 cup cacao, 4 tbsp. water, and 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract. I made the mistake of putting too much vanilla and then I ended up being able to taste the ethyl that the beans were percolating in at the factory. I would show you an image but the frosting just looks like a septic tank. Again, you can add honey if you’d like.
5. After the cake is done baking, wait for it to cool first before adding the frosting. When I did this, it poured onto the cake but didn’t solidify fast enough since it was constantly getting melted by the surface of the cake.

And, there you have it! There’s your cake that’s more of a brownie. For those of you who worship butter but actually made this, I bet it probably tastes like one of those sad free samples you would’ve gotten at Trader Joe’s. You know, like those water crackers that transform your tongue to the sands of the Sahara.

Also, I forgot to mention, I didn’t calculate the measurements to fit the serving size I was doing, I just threw things together and tried modifying the measurements so that it doesn’t look like I just completely copied some recipe in the description box of a YouTube channel also making this cake.