Orange & Pumpkin Crazy Cake

I want to share with you today a very special cake I recently made.  It’s special because this cake contained NO EGGS, NO BUTTER, NO MILK  and if you want to follow my recipe exactly, you don’t even need a bowl!!  It’s the ideal cake for introducing to your little toddler, and especially mine, as I’m delaying the introduction of dairy and eggs to her.

This recipe was tweaked from the original vanilla crazy cake recipe, and I added some orange and pumpkin to it for that extra flavor.

The resulting cake was moist and fragrant.  It did not fluff up and rise as much as a normal cake would do, but that’s not a big issue.  The consistency was also slightly dense but it was negligible given that this cake is such a breeze to make (and clean up after)!  In fact, it’s super duper easy to make, so much so that you can totally get those little ones to help you make it in the kitchen.

Let me know how you like it if you do try it, okay?

Orange & Pumpkin Crazy Cake

Ingredients

• 1½ cups + 3 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1 cup sugar (I used molasses, but you can also use brown sugar or white sugar)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt

• 1 tsp vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar but you can also use white vinegar)
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 5 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 cup water
• ¼ cup orange juice (freshly squeezed) & mashed steamed pumpkin (the amount of orange juice and steamed pumpkin was estimated)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F or 175°C.  My oven tends to run slightly hotter, so I adjusted the temperature to about 150°C.

2. Mix first 5 dry ingredients in a greased 8″ square baking pan.  Make 3 depressions in dry ingredients – two small, one larger. Pour vinegar in one depression, vanilla in the other and the vegetable oil in third larger depression.

3. Pour water and orange juice and pumpkin mixture over all.  Mix well until smooth.

4. Bake on middle rack of oven for 35 minutes.  Check with toothpick to make sure it comes out clean.  Cool.  Eat on its own or top with your favorite frosting.  It also tastes super divine with some butter!  Enjoy!