Here's another cake/dessert recipe for your files from yours truly, the omnivore (hey, I don't *just* eat meat, you know!). It's not only good for vegans, but for kosher households as well (no dairy, you see); plus, it's so easy a stunned monkey could make it!

For each cake layer (8-9" round or square pan), you'll need:

• 1 1/2 cups flour (King Arthur unbleached works just fine)
• 1 cup white sugar (haven't tried turbanado, so I don't know how it would be)
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder (get a decent brand, not the generic stuff)
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/3 cup vegetable shortening, vegetable margarine, or vegetable oil (the texture is best with the first)
• 1 cup cold water (you may need a T. more or so if the flour is esp. dry)
• 1 T. cider vinegar (*must* be cider vinegar!)
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Combine all dry ingredients, then add shortening and cut in slightly. Add vinegar to water and add to rest of mixture a bit at a time, beating well; then add vanilla. Pour into greased/wax paper-lined cake pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes (give it the straw test starting at 25 minutes; when straw comes away clean, it's done). Let cool and frost/decorate/do whatever you like with it. It's actually better the next day if you wrap it well/keep it covered with aluminum foil, or frost it and keep it in a cake safe (i.e., covered cake plate). This also makes terrific cupcakes; just substitute cupcake pans & lining papers for the greased/lined cake pan, and bake for around 20 minutes or so.

(FWIW, my mother clipped the original recipe from a newspaper in the '50s, and I suspect that it goes back to World War II and ration coupon books--milk, eggs and butter were harder to obtain during the war, and many recipes sprang up that didn't call for some or all of such ingredients. There's a recipe in Jane & Michael Stern's _Square Meals_ for a WWII spice cake that, I think, would qualify for this site, but I don't remember it off the top of my head. Sorry about that...)

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to e-mail me at robin@mindspring.com . Bon appetit!

Robin the mad photographer (who has not, alas, figured out a vegan version of her famous brownies...)