No-egg chocolate cake with freakish ingredient

This low-fat cake (see recipe below) was tasty enough to satisfy my cravings at a Super Bowl party the night before my Weight Watchers weigh-in, and it occurs to me that with one modification it could also go on my fallout-shelter menu.

The secret ingredient: canned sauerkraut.

I am not making this up. We really did put sauerkraut in this cake. And my kids liked it. And said they’d eat it again, even now that they know about the sauerkraut. I suppose it helps hold things together in place of the eggs.

In a true fallout-shelter situation, you’d have to figure out how to puree it, but hey, people are resourceful under duress. ( I’d probably use a knife.) Everything else -- flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, etc.-- could easily endure long-term storage, with the exception of the melted butter. Because time was a factor on Sunday, and because even with the butter this cake only registers four Weight Watchers points a slice, I didn’t bother substituting oil or, even better, applesauce. But we’ll definitely swap that out next time we make this and see what happens.

Weight Watchers cost-benefit analysis update: Three weeks, a little over 12 pounds. (But I’ve actually paid for four meetings, counting the initial weigh-in, which I forgot to count last week.) So at a little less than $10 per meeting, I’m looking at a ratio of roughly $10 for every three pounds. If this rate continues (which it likely won’t), it would cost $100 to lose 30 pounds.

Weight Watchers Dark Chocolate Cake Recipe
(This comes from laaloosh.com. For a printer-friendly version, click here.)
Nonfat cooking spray to lightly coat a Bundt pan (we used a 13-by-9 pan, which worked fine)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 1/2 cups hot water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup sauerkraut, pureed
1 tsp unsweetened cocoa for dusting (you can also use powdered sugar and a light drizzle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup for no extra WW points)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees, coat pan with cooking spray.
In large mixing bowl combine dry ingredients. Add melted butter, hot water and vanilla extract, then mix. Add pureed sauerkraut and mix thoroughly.
Pour batter into pan and bake 55-60 minutes, until fork inserted in cake’s center comes out clean. Cool for 20 minutes before removing from pan (if you’re using a Bundt pan; we just served ours in the baking dish.)
Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of coca powder (or same amount of powdered sugar and light drizzle of Hershey’s syrup). Cut into 14 slices to get advertised points value. (We cut ours in to 15 slices, given the rectangular shape of our pan. Better points value, too.)