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Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake

Midwest and Pennsylvania, mid-century community cookbooks

🇺🇸 USA Desserts easy 25 min prep · 35 min cook serves 12 squares 2 hr start to table ~460 kcal per piece surprise

A 1960s school lunchroom invention that hides a cup of fermented cabbage inside a chocolate layer cake. Nobody who eats it blind ever guesses.

Once rinsed and finely chopped, sauerkraut loses almost all of its sourness and behaves like shredded coconut, carrying moisture and a faint chew through the crumb. Cocoa is assertive enough to cover the last whisper of tang, the same trick vintage bakers pulled with beets and zucchini.

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The story

The cake appeared in the early 1960s, when the USDA had surplus canned sauerkraut and school cafeterias were asked to find uses for it; one popular telling credits a lunchroom cook named Geraldine Timms. Whatever the exact origin, it spread through community cookbooks and April Fools recipe swaps, especially in German and Polish American households across the Midwest and Pennsylvania.

It survives today as a potluck curiosity and an heirloom recipe, the kind grandmothers made partly for the reveal. Families still bake it for birthdays and church suppers, announce the secret ingredient after the second slice, and enjoy the reaction.

Fair warning: If you skip the rinse or chop the kraut lazily, sour threads turn up in the crumb and give the secret away in the worst possible way.
The recipe

Ingredients

  • 150 g (1 cup) sauerkrautweighed after rinsing and squeezing dry, then chopped almost to a mince
  • 250 g (2 cups) all-purpose flour
  • 60 g (2/3 cup) unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 115 g (1/2 cup) unsalted buttersoftened
  • 300 g (1 1/2 cups) sugar
  • 3 large eggsroom temperature
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 240 ml (1 cup) water
  • 340 g (3 cups) confectioners' sugarfor the frosting
  • 40 g (6 tbsp) cocoa powderfor the frosting
  • 85 g (6 tbsp) butter, softenedfor the frosting
  • 3 to 4 tbsp heavy cream or milkfor the frosting, plus 1 tsp vanilla

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 175 C (350 F) and grease a 23 x 33 cm (9 x 13 inch) pan.
  2. Rinse the sauerkraut in a sieve under cold water, squeeze it as dry as you can, and chop it very fine.
  3. Whisk the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.
  4. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar for 2 to 3 minutes, then beat in the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla.
  5. Add the dry mixture in three additions, alternating with the water, mixing only until each addition disappears.
  6. Fold in the chopped sauerkraut until evenly distributed.
  7. Spread the batter in the pan and bake 30 to 35 minutes, until a toothpick in the center comes out clean.
  8. Cool completely in the pan on a rack.
  9. Beat the frosting butter until smooth, add the confectioners' sugar and cocoa alternately with the cream and vanilla, beat until spreadable, and frost the cooled cake.
Shopping notes
Any jarred or bagged plain sauerkraut works; avoid varieties flavored with caraway or wine. Everything else is baking aisle standard.
Cross-checked against: tasteofhome.com · iambaker.net
Kitchen notes

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