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Cocoanut, Date Apple Sauce Cake
1½ cups hot apple sauce 1/2 cup butter 1 cup sugar 1 cup Dromedary Dates, stoned and quartered 1 cup Dromedary Cocoanut 2 teaspoons baking soda 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon powdered cinnamon 1 teaspoon powdered ginger 1/2 teaspoon salt Stir butter into sauce, add sugar, dates, cocoanut and flour sifted with soda, spices and salt. Bake in a loaf or in layers with a white frosting.
An eggless spice loaf leavened entirely by the reaction between baking soda and the acid in apple sauce. The original gives no oven temperature or time, so both need supplying.
- Work quickly once the soda goes inThe apple sauce is the only acid here, and it is hot, so the soda begins fizzing immediately. Have the pan greased and the oven up to heat before you sift the dry ingredients in, and get the batter into the oven at once.
- Oven and timeBake a loaf at 350F for 50 to 60 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean; layers in two 8-inch pans need 25 to 30 minutes. The date and apple sauce batter browns early, so judge doneness by the centre rather than the crust.
- Use unsweetened apple saucePeriod apple sauce was often barely sweetened or not at all. Modern jarred sauce is frequently sugared, which with the full cup of sugar makes the loaf cloying. Unsweetened sauce, warmed to steaming, is the closer match.
- Two teaspoons of soda is deliberate but generousWith no eggs, the soda does all the lifting, and the dates and spices mask the taste. If your apple sauce is mild rather than tart, a scant 1½ teaspoons gives a cleaner flavour.
- Dromedary CocoanutThis was dry shredded coconut, drier and finer than most bagged sweetened flake today. Unsweetened desiccated coconut is the nearest equivalent; if using sweetened flake, cut the sugar by a couple of tablespoons.
- Stoned and quartered datesPitted dates cut into quarters, not chopped fine. Toss the pieces in a spoonful of the measured flour first so they do not sink or clump in a batter this soft.
- White frostingMost likely a boiled or seven-minute white icing rather than buttercream, though the book does not say. A plain confectioners' sugar glaze also suits the loaf version, which is dense and moist enough to need no filling.
- YieldOne 9-by-5-inch loaf, about twelve slices, or a modest two-layer cake. It keeps better than most cakes; the fruit and apple sauce hold moisture for three or four days wrapped.
This comes from a promotional booklet issued by the Hills Brothers Company of New York, whose Dromedary brand put dates, and later shredded coconut and citrus peel, into American pantries in printed cartons rather than loose from a barrel. Apple sauce cake belongs to a broader family of eggless, milkless "economy" cakes that spread widely during and after the First World War, when eggs and butter were dear and fruit pur tee could stand in for both moisture and part of the fat; the pairing of apple sauce with baking soda and warm spices was well established by the 1910s. Booklets like this one existed to attach a brand name to such household staples, which is why the recipe calls for the company's coconut and dates by name. The layer-cake-with-white-frosting suggestion reflects the period's habit of dressing up a thrifty batter for the table.