Easy Chocolate Oatmeal Snack Cake

When I was growing up, my best friend’s family introduced me to this Chocolate Oatmeal Snack Cake. They used to put a piece in a bowl and pour milk over it, and while I never got into that, it is delicious when eaten warm with a glass of cold milk.

It’s been ages since I’ve made this cake but I made it twice this week and couldn’t figure out why this recipe fell out of rotation!  It’s got a rich chocolate flavor (I like it with Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder, in particular), and there’s no need to mess with making a frosting: it will be eaten up by the time it cools enough to frost!

I strongly recommend weighing the flour, as I’ve found that doing so has given me vastly better results when baking at high altitude – an environment that seems to be very sensitive to even slight changes.  This recipe below has been adjusted for high altitude, but I have found that the weighing of flour is just as important as adjusting any other ingredients for altitude.

Easy Chocolate Oatmeal Snack Cake

Ingredients
1½ (180 g) cups flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
3 T cocoa
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1½ cups water
1 cup rolled oats
½ cup butter, cut into pieces
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350º. Lightly coat a 13×9 baking pan with cooking spray.  Whisk sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl.

Bring water to boil, then add oats and butter and stir until butter is melted. Whisk in eggs and vanilla.  Add liquid mixture to dry, and fold together until just moistened. Pour into baking pan and sprinkle with chocolate chips (which I forgot to do when I took the photos, so I just sprinkled them on top at the end).

Bake for 25-30 minutes or toothpick comes out clean or until center springs back when pressed.