Austerity Cakes

Author: Mary Cook

The traditional Boxing Day party was to be at my grandparents' house this particular year—following the Second World War. But austerity was a harsh fact of life and food rationing was at its most high. How could one have a party without cake?

That was the dilemma facing our family. In England, 1940, the government had placed a ban on selling or making cakes with frosting. Fresh eggs weren't readily available, as they were being rationed (one egg for each person in the family per week). In fact it wasn't until 1950 that the points system was abolished and we were finally allowed to cut up the family ration books in order to play "shop".

The year in question must have been 1946. Or was it 1947? If all the guests were to pool their ration coupons, we might just be able to get enough ingredients to make a small fruitcake. That's assuming there were any ingredients available. Having enough coupons was one thing, but finding the items in the "shops" was a different matter all together. And if grandmother were to bake a cake, how many would it feed?

While the children would have fun wearing paper hats and playing games, like Spin the Plate and Spin the Bottle—the young guests and older family members were much more concerned about the food they would eat. Potted meat and fish thinly spread on bread with the merest scraping of butter were everyday fare—but no matter how well my grandmother presented them or with how much love she served them, no one wanted to attend a party eating rations.

It was Mrs. Bishop who arrived to save the day—with her contribution to the meal. Diving into a large shopping bag, she produced a tin of individual cakes whose main ingredient was none other than stale bread!

I paced around the table with something akin to reverence as the speckled brownish objects were ceremoniously laid out. At no more than four or five years old, I thought these "cakes" were the best thing I'd tasted in my entire life. To be fair, I still had a lot of living and eating to do.

My mother eagerly snapped up the recipe. Even she, a woman with more beauty than domestic skills and whose idea of cooking was to set bread on fire to make toast, was able to reproduce them.

There was just one snag. I only had to mention to my mother that I'd actually enjoyed something she served up, and she would put the same dish before me every day for the next three months. Luckily, bread and butter rationing meant that even stale bread supplies would run out before boredom set in.

Austerity Cake Recipe

Ingredients

1 slice stale bread per person
1 C granulated sugar
1 C grated coconut
1 C cocoa
1 C orange juice

Instructions

Trim the crusts from slices of stale bread and cut them into fingers (long strips).
Dip the bread fingers into the orange juice.
Mix the sugar, coconut and cocoa together.
Place the sugar, coconut, and cocoa mixture into a large bowl and coat each bread finger both sides with the mixture.
Place the fingers on greaseproof paper to dry overnight.

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