Prelude: I am a proud Canadian. When the Culinary Historians of Canada (CHC) invited food bloggers to participate in the “CHC Canada 150 Food Blog Challenge”, I knew that I wanted in! What a great way to celebrate and honour Canada’s 150th birthday by featuring a different Canadian dish or discussing a topic which reflects on what it means to be Canadian. For November, the Culinary Historians invited bloggers to post about the foods associated with war and remembrance, including soldiers’ rations, homefront cooking and rationing, as well as other foods that help us remember those we’ve lost. For those reasons, I am sharing a Vintage Spice Cake with Toffee Frosting from a treasured cookbook.
Mom’s favourite and only cookbook was this Watkins Cookbook – circa the 1940s
The cake itself is unique in that it does not have eggs, butter, or milk, yet, it is very moist and flavourful due to the use of abundant spices and a mixture of raisins, sugar and boiling water. The fragrance of this cake when baking is unbelievable. It was originally called “The Economy Spice Cake” and you will learn about its history as you read further. When I was researching the frosting for this cake, the term used in the recipe title was ‘Sugarless Cake Frosting.’ It utilizes a reduction of sweetened condensed milk, which is not sugarless at all, however, the term ‘sugarless’ was used during WWII in terms of sugar ration points – the sweetened milk was indeed viewed as ‘sugarless.” I am including this authentic recipe as written for that period.
Vintage Spice Cake
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