This is an old Canadian recipe that comes from World War I and II. It was called War Cake because it was made during those tough times when it was not easy to get hold of butter and eggs.
There are many dozen war cake recipes on-line. This is my own.
The recipe is easily customizable
2 cups water
2 cups dried fruit - you could use raisins, cranberries, chopped apricots or glacé fruits that you would put in Christmas cake. In Newfoundland this is one of the ways that people make Christmas cake, using the war cake recipe. I used currants because I had them on hand.
I cup fancy molasses
1 cup white sugar
2/3 cup shortening or vegan butter
3 1/4 cups of all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1.5 tsp ground ginger
1.5 tsp ground nutmeg
Pre-heat your oven to 325
Place the water, the fruit, the molasses, the sugar and the shortening in a deep saucepan and bring to a boil and let it boil for about three minutes. Keep your eye on it. Remove from heat and allow it to cool. It doesn’t have to be at room temp, but it can’t be so hot that you couldn’t touch it.
Mix the flour, the baking soda and the spices in a bowl and then pour the dry ingredients into the wet. When I made this, I used a heavy sauce pot, so I had lots of room to mix the dry ingredients into the liquid in that pot.
This makes a fairly runny batter, perhaps a bit runnier than you might expect.
Pour the batter into a prepared 9 x 13 pan and bake for at least an hour or until a test toothpick comes out clean.
The cake will be very moist. It freezes well.
It goes very nicely with vegan custard or ice cream.
I was thinking about posting a variation of this cake for Vegan MOFO this year! I was going to try one that used rye flour instead of wheat flour. It's an easy and yummy cake.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment! My neighbour across the street is from Newfoundland and she says this is what they use as a base for Christmas cake. So I’m going to try it in November but I’ll add nuts and other fruits as well.
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