Contrary to its name, Sad Cake has nothing to do with a feeling. Instead, it gets its name from a lighthearted term for sunken confections—but there’s nothing sad about it at all.
Like Wacky Cake, its ingredients and method are simple and economical, but it has a chewy, toothsome texture like a cross between Gooey Butter Cake and a classic blondie.
History Of Sad Cake
Recipes for this chewy dessert are common in 1980s community cookbooks (like From the Kit Fox Kitchen to The Lubbock Women’s Club Cookbook, to name a few). Like many popular recipes in the 1980s, it relies on a quick biscuit mix like Bisquick, but it also includes chopped nuts of some kind, eggs, butter, and a little extra sugar—because: Why not?
Why It’s Called Sad Cake
When a traditional cake sponge bakes, it should only rise. Sometimes, cakes dome, and sometimes they stay level—but it should never fall or sink. This use of “sad” can be traced back to regional British bakers, who used it to describe failed confections “that [have] failed to rise, heavy.”
A fallen cake is often called a “slack cake” or, more colloquially, “sad cake.” Made with Bisquick, this recipe from the 1980s would make British bakers shiver, but it’s sturdy and humorously leans into the “failure.” The result is imperfectly bubbly and crackled on top, but it tastes amazing.
In reality, it’s not so much a cake as much as it is a bar. It doesn’t sink or fall, necessarily, but its crumb is denser and heavier, like a brownie.
Ingredients For Sad Cake
Only a few basic ingredients are needed for simple Sad Cake, including a Southerner’s best kept baking secret: Bisquick Mix. Pecans add a little extra texture, but you could also omit them for a nut-free version.
- Baking Spray: Keeps the final product from sticking to the baking dish.
- Salted butter: Because we use Bisquick mix in this recipe, no added salt is needed, but salted butter helps boost the flavor.
- Light brown sugar: While the Bisquick mixture is naturally slightly sweet, ample light brown sugar adds some true depth of sweetness with caramel and molasses notes.
- Large eggs: Use room temperature eggs for best results.
- Vanilla extract: Balances the sweetness and enhances the overall flavors.
- Bisquick Mix: Providing the bulk of the structure and crumb of this recipe, Bisquick mix is essentially a self-rising flour mixture that already contains all the leavening and binding agents you need for a structured, tidy crumb.
- Chopped pecans: Chopped pecans incorporate easily into the batter, making for tidy slices (you can always chop them finer if they are large).
