Before today, I had never heard of depression cake.  This afternoon one of my Facebook friends posted that her daughter made a depression cake and I assumed that meant her daughter made a cake because she was depressed!  Nope.  Apparently, it’s a cake recipe that uses no butter, eggs or milk, so it was affordable even during the depression!  My daughter just had to try it, so we got on Pinterest, found a recipe and whipped it up!  I adapted my buttermilk brownie frosting recipe for this because it’s simple, inexpensive ingredients that I always have on hand.  The links for the frosting in the recipe I found included evaporated milk and chocolate chips or chilled coconut milk and chocolate chips. I found mine to be much simpler!

Start by greasing your pan, which I neglected to do.  *gasp*  Combine flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt and whisk until well mixed.

Make 3 wells and put oil in one, vinegar in one, vanilla in one.

Pour water over the top and whisk until combined.

Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

In the last 5 min or so that it’s in the oven, bring half and half, butter, salt and cocoa powder to a boil.

Add powdered sugar and whisk until well combined.

Pour over hot cake as soon as it comes out of the oven.

Cool and enjoy!

If you mix it in a separate bowl, the cake pan will be prettier, but mixing it this way makes it super easy even for a 9 year old — bonus, they can lick the whisk since it’s egg free!

This was yummy!  I have to say that the texture was different, but not bad and so very easy to make.  Let me know what you think!

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