Making a War Cake

Sarah Shaber author photoRelevant History welcomes historical mystery author Sarah Shaber. She’s the author of the Professor Simon Shaw mystery series. Simon Said, first book of the series, won the St. Malice Press/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery award. Louise’s War is the first book in her new mystery series set in Washington DC during World War II. The sequel, Louise’s Gamble, is scheduled for publication in May 2012. Sarah also edited Tar Heel Dead, a collection of short stories by North Carolina mystery writers. Sarah lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband Steve and an autocratic miniature schnauzer. For more information, check her web site, and follow her on Facebook.

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WW2 rationing stampDuring World War II rationing was a fact of life. We’ve heard all about the shortages, ration books, and sacrifices made by Americans on the home front. But what exactly did it mean to make do with so much less of everything?

Of all the shortages that tested American tempers, food restrictions had the greatest daily impact. Butter, meat, canned goods, chocolate, coffee, eggs, and sugar were in short supply even before formal rationing began. Not just because the troops needed them, but because the government needed to conserve the fuel needed to transport these commodities.

Americans were accustomed to eating dessert every day, enjoying beef most nights for dinner, eggs every morning for breakfast, and consuming all the butter and coffee they wanted. Chicken and fish weren’t rationed, but at the time Americans thought of them as lesser sources of protein. Margarine and artificial sweeteners hadn’t been invented.

Sugar was the first item to be rationed officially, in May of 1942. A butter shortage followed shortly, and the average American cook wondered what in heaven’s name she was supposed to fix for dinner. New recipes crowded the women’s magazines and newspapers. Mashed potato, bacon and cheese casserole, macaroni and cheese, and Welsh rarebit became main dishes, much to the shock of those who wanted their roast beef or steak!’

War cakeDessert might have been the hardest loss to take. The American housewife usually baked a cake, a pie, or cookies every single day. She was expected to keep making those cakes, pies, and cookies! And prune whip wasn’t an acceptable alternative.

Louise Pearlie, the heroine of Louise’s War, my World War II novel set in Washington, DC, missed her sugar and butter as much as anyone. She and her fellow boarders did have eggs, because they had chickens in the back yard, but otherwise they dealt with the same restrictions as anyone else, complicated by the fact that Dellaphine, the boarding house cook, had all their ration books and kept them under lock and key! Dellaphine didn’t cook on the weekends, except for Sunday dinner, so on a Saturday Louise often found herself in the kitchen baking one of the many war cakes from the recipes in Recipes for Today, the WWII ration cookbook published by the General Foods Corporation. It was a nice break from a long week working at the spy agency OSS.

I decided to bake a war cake myself, to see what it was like to cook with such meager ingredients, and especially, to see what a war cake tasted like! I got my recipe, called the One Egg Wonder Cake, from the same cookbook Louise did, and started with the same paltry ingredients. Flour, baking powder, vegetable shortening, one cup of sugar (could have used a half cup sugar and a half cup of corn syrup), one measly egg, and a little milk and vanilla. I added some maple syrup, cinnamon and raisins to make the “spice” variation. The batter was thin and unappetizing, only about an inch deep in the baking dish. Tasting the batter did not make me optimistic about the outcome of my experiment!

War ration couponI baked the cake at 375 degrees for about 35 minutes. It came out of the oven golden brown, maybe an inch and a half high. I couldn’t frost it, of course. Louise wouldn’t have had enough sugar and butter to do that.

So how did it taste? Not half bad! It wasn’t as moist and rich as a “real” cake, but it wasn’t dry either. It tasted sort of like a spiced tea cake, and would have been good as an afternoon snack with milk or coffee, if there was enough of either to go around.

I’m sure Louise and her fellow boarders appreciated having this cake for dessert after a predictable meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cabbage, and iced tea. I’m just as sure they’d rather have had brownies!

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Louise's War book coverA big thanks to Sarah Shaber. She’ll give away one hardback copy of Louise’s War to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Sunday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery in the U.S. and Canada is available.

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Comments

Making a War Cake — 17 Comments

  1. Sarah, thanks for being my guest this week. Such a timely topic, too. Throughout history, we’ve seen examples of how scarcity hones the determination and resourcefulness of humans.
    During the American War of Independence, colonists boycotted imported tea and cloth, switching to coffee and herbal teas, and homespun fabrics. The “coffee” could be quite nasty and frequently contained stuff other than coffee to stretch the coffee supply. The “homespun” looked lumpy and yokel-ish. But colonists made their point.
    I’m amazed that people who control supplies of goods don’t learn from history that putting the pinch on the supply of just about every product sends consumers looking for workarounds. I guess those people don’t study history. :-)

  2. I remember being surprised when reading “84 Charing Cross Road” just how long rationing continued in effect in Britain. Part of me thinks the way I eat now would make it not too hard to live with rationing, but I suspect the reality would prove to be different!

  3. Rationing continued in Britain until 1954! Some say that’s when British cooking gained it’s poor reputation–good ingredients just weren’t available. Even when I was living there as a student in 1972, spagettios on toast was considered a reasonable breakfast, and bangers and mash a healthy dinner.

  4. Great post, Sarah. My mom lived through this and still talks about rationing. Another writer friend, Fr. Jim Lupton, tells the story of during the war when his family hosted a Royal Navy Captain for dinner. His mom worried about the meager offerings and borrowed rations to put on a nice meal. When they sat down to the first course of half a grapefruit she’d browned in the broiler with sugar, tears came to the man’s eyes. “I haven’t had fresh fruit in over two years.”
    I love this period in our history. Good luck with the new book!

  5. My mother told me about rationing during WWII. I still have a ration coupon. She told me how hard it was to make cakes, she probably would have loved to have the recipe above. She did say that it was rumored that one of my aunts hoarded sugar coupons.
    I am very interested in your new book.

  6. Sarah, Britain was wiped by WWII for several decades in numerous ways. I attended a presentation last month in which the speaker told us that London didn’t start rebuilding from the Blitz until the early 1960s, and the rebuilding continued into the 1970s. That surprised me because I (and probably other Americans) have the impression of early 1960s London as cosmopolitan from James Bond and the Beatles. Why didn’t they tell me this in history class? Well, umm, maybe I’m such a fossil that the rebuilding was going on while I was in history class. lol
    When I lived in Norwich in the early 1980s, I noticed that the Brits added beans often to meals — I presume a throwback to when they had to stretch 1/4# of beef to feed a family. I purchased a British cookbook while I was there. (When in Rome, you know.) I still have it and cook from it on occasion. One of the recipes is a variation of Bangers and Mash: beans, bacon, and hard-boiled eggs. In that recipe, you can really see the way they stretched protein sources.

  7. Hi Marni and Carol! Thanks for visiting. My mother also remembers the rationing. She lived on a farm, so she didn’t feel food rationing as severely as someone living in the city would have, but she has plenty of stories about doing without. Our parents are like a time capsule, aren’t they?

  8. My mother, a product of Depression-Era parents, was a young woman during WWII. Growing up, I always thought it odd that she hoarded canned goods and kept two freezers full at all times. After reading this post, I guess part of it could have been wanting to ensure she would never run out of anything…
    On the other hand, my diet could probably use a bit less red meat, sugar, and butter–I wonder where I could find one of those WWI ration cookbooks?
    Thanks for a fascinating post–I look forward to reading your new series!

  9. Not an entry, as I have read, and enjoyed, Louise’s War. Just wanted to observe that less beef, sugar and butter and fewer eggs sound like what doctors today tell us is healthy eating.

  10. Fascinating post, especially for a Brit, to learn what the Americans suffered in WW2. People here during the war tended to regard all Americans as rich and wouldn’t have believed there was food rationing in the US – I suppose that’s because most people’s idea of “Yanks” was drawn from the US servicemen stationed here. One thing – London certainly did start rebuilding before the 1960s (though it was a slow job,) kicking off I think with the Festival of Britain exhibition in 1951, and 1050s buildings like the Royal Festival Hall, a state-of-the-art concert hall on the South Bank of the Thames.I was a student there in the early ’60s, and it was terrific – such a feeling of optimism, being in a cosmopolitan modern city.

  11. Thanks for the fun information, Sarah. Glad to find your blog, Suzanne, which I discovered from your post on “Crime Thru Time.” Loved “Louise’s War,” for just this sort of attention to detail. It almost reads like documentary, as if it were based on someone’s diary or letters, and I love that. My mother was a young married in the Depression (how old am I! To be fair, I was the youngest child), and she often talked about how hard it was to put out a good dinner then, not so much WWII. Apparently, she took rationing in stride. I look forward to “Louise’s Gamble!”
    Nan

  12. My mother made a similar cake after WW2 that she called her ‘sugarless egg-less cake-less cake’ which was very good. It contained raisins and spices and was moist and delicious.
    boots9k at wowway dot com

  13. This is fascinating. I have a recipe for coffee cake that was passed down from my grandmother to my mother and then to me. It uses just over half a stick of butter, one egg, and not quite 3/4 cup of sugar (along wtih flour, milk, baking powder,etc.). It’s not overly sweet or most, but it is good and always goes over well with family and friends when I make it.

  14. My mom was a child during WWII and her parents had a tough time raising 3 kids, so as I was growing up I was always told to ‘clean my plate’ and ‘be thankful’ for what you have’ and of course, the big one on the guilt-meter, ‘there are children in [wherever] who are starving tonight’ which often made me want to say, ‘fine, send this [liver or dry meatloaf] to them!’
    I belong to a mystery book discussion group and my turn to pick a book is in July, when I will be putting Louise’s War forward as my choice. I’ve been wanting to read it, but a big car repair took my extra cash, so I’m waiting on a library copy. I’d love to add the book to my collection at home!

  15. Folks, Sarah is having computer problems and will respond to your wonderful comments as soon as she can.
    Nan, Karen, and Kate, welcome to my blog.
    Linda, Liz, Jane, and Shirley, thanks for visiting my blog again.

  16. Hi, all, I have hijacked my son’s computer to respond to your wonderful comments!
    Have any of you read the PBS story related to the wonderful cooking we saw on Downton Abbey–and how British cuisine was impacted for decades after the war? And here in the US, rationing led to more healthful eating, more vegetables and less butter, sugar, and red meat. The government spent a lot of time and money studying nutrition. During the war over half the young men drafted were malnourished! So two of Harry Truman’s post war goals were to found a school lunch program and establish universal health care. He got the first, but not the second, and we as a people still suffer because of it!