wacky wedding cake

Good friends of mine eloped a few weeks back. No one knew, no one, not even their parents...so when they came home and told everyone, it was quite the surprise. Needless to say we wanted to have a small celebration for them. So it was dinner out, a little prosecco and a cake, add the newly weds and it was a great time with friends. The cake below was super easy to make - maybe a little too easy for a wedding cake. It is a chocolate vegan cake, with cherry brandy sprinkled on the layers, cherry pie filling between the layers and then iced with swiss meringue (from last month's Daring Baking Challenge)

This cake recipe was from my mom, she always called it Wacky Cake, it must have been called that because there was no egg or milk in it. Anyhow the great thing about this cake is that at almost any time you have all of these ingredients on hand. The recipe below is enough to make a 2 6" cakes plus 2 ramikens of cake.

Cake Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons cocoa (unsweetened)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon vinegar
5 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup cold water

Directions:

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt

2. Make three wells in the flour mixture. Put the vanilla in one, in another the vinegar, and in the third the oil. Pour the cold water over the mixture and stir until moistened.

3. Evenly distribute the batter into 2- 6 inch round cake pans (I had a nice small spring form pan that I used) and into 2 small greased ramikens.

4. Bake at 350°F. oven for 25 to 30 minutes, or until it springs back when touched lightly.
   
   
5. Once all the cakes have baked and are out of the oven, allow to cool for about 15 minutes and then turn onto colling racks.
   
   
6. Once completely cooled slice the two larger cakes horizontally so that you now have 4 layers plus the two ramikens. Trim any mounds on the cake to be sure that it is level.
   
   
7. Drizzle cherry brandy on all the layers
   
   
8. Begin stacking the cake, adding some filling to one side of the layer, and some of the swiss meringue butter cream to the bottom of the next layer, continue for all the large layers. For the small ramiken layers I cut a "cork" out, added some filling, trimmed the cork and then topped off the mini cake with it.
   
   
9. I took the larger set of cakes and the smaller set and treated them like two separate cakes until right at the end.
   
   
10. Crumb coat both cakes. Refrigerate until the base layer of icing is set.
    
    
11. Ice a final top layer.
    
    
12. Optional --> Take ribbon of your choice and add to bottom of each cake. Hold in place with pins at the back of the cake.
    
    
13. Stack cakes and adorn as you choose.