Cake | Birthdays | Recipes | Great Depression | World War 2
What’s a Birthday Without Cake?
A Family History of Cakes (Recipes Included)
Every family has a favorite cake that Mom or Grandma baked year after year for birthdays, the church bake sale, or the county fair in hopes of winning a blue ribbon.
Flourless Cakes
Gluten-free cakes, cakes made with garbonzo beans, ground almonds, cornmeal are all the rage now. But flourless cakes aren’t new. During the Great Depression and World War 2 nothing was wasted.
Nana’s Potato Cake
During World War 1, Nana, my grandmother, made her first cake with left-over mashed potatoes. This moist chocolate cake was the beginning of my family’s love-affair with Nana’s potato cake. She continued making it during the Great Depression when nothing went to waste.
Then in 1942, as part of The War effort, homemakers were limited by rationing including flour, sugar, and butter. Nana would use her ration card for enough sugar and flour for the cake and a new substitute for butter called “margarine” so she didn’t have to waste her ration card on butter. Then she used last night’s left-over mashed potatoes for part of the flour.
