Cola mayo sauerkraut chocolate cake? April Fool!

April Fools’ Day is on Saturday. Want to have some fun? How about making a Cherry Cola Mayonnaise Sauerkraut Chocolate Cake? Keep a straight face when you serve it, and no one will suspect the trickery.

The cake works because the chemistry works: Mayo stands in for oil or butter, sauerkraut adds a coconutlike texture and cola adds fizz, giving a boost in lightness along with a punch of flavor.

I made the cake, and it turned out just fine. But why, I wondered, would anyone want to develop a recipe like that? So I emailed the recipe developer, Rozanne Gold. She is an awardwinning chef, cookbook author and restaurant consultant.

“As a kind of relief from the seriousness of the kitchen and the projects we work on, unusual recipes have always struck my fancy,” said Ms. Gold. “It is the nature of the beast, and the culinary equivalent of irony perhaps, to amuse oneself in this way sometimes. Whether it is a pileup of odd foodstuffs that actually results in a beautiful offering, the oddity of cooking a chicken inside a watermelon (yes, it’s in “Recipes 1-2-3”), or baking a cake in a shoebox (the batter-filled box goes into the oven), it is a kind of intellectual gambol and gamble. But it is also the way I create more consequential dishes, too, with rather daring new food combinations and techniques.”

And there you are. Don’t tell people about the ingredients in this April Fools’ Day cake recipe until they’ve swept their plates clean. Would I make the cake again? Sure, next April 1st.