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Apple Sauce Cake (Eggless) (No cup brown sugar cup butter)
No. 1 1 cup brown sugar ¾ cup butter 1 cup raisins ¼ 1/4 pound peel 1½ cups hot apple sauce 1 teaspoon cinnamon ½ nutmeg 2½ cups Five Roses flour 2 teaspoons (level) soda dissolved in the hot apple sauce Bake in a loaf.
Three tablespoons molasses are sometimes added.
A loaf cake built on the reaction between hot apple sauce and baking soda in place of eggs. The original assumes you know how to assemble and bake a loaf, so most of what follows fills in what it leaves out.
- The hinge: work fast once the soda goes inDissolve the soda in the apple sauce while it is genuinely hot, then get the batter into the pan and into the oven immediately. The lift comes entirely from that foaming reaction, and it will not wait for you.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard spring wheat flour, sold as a general household flour. Ordinary all-purpose flour is the right substitute; measure the 2½ cups by spooning and levelling rather than scooping.
- Peel"¼ pound peel" means candied citron, orange or lemon peel, about ¾ cup once chopped. Cut it small and toss it with a spoonful of the measured flour so it does not sink.
- Half a nutmegRoughly 1 to 1½ teaspoons freshly grated. Whole nutmegs vary a good deal in size, so grate and taste rather than trusting the fraction.
- Apple sauceUse unsweetened; period apple sauce was often barely sweetened and the cake already carries a full cup of brown sugar. Thick, smooth sauce gives a better crumb than watery.
- Soda and saltTwo level teaspoons of soda is a heavy dose by modern standards, though there is no other leavening here and the batter is acidic. The recipe calls for no salt; if the butter is unsalted, ½ teaspoon is a reasonable addition, as recipes of this period commonly assumed salted butter.
- Method the recipe omitsCream the butter and brown sugar, stir in the spices, raisins and peel, then alternate the flour with the hot apple sauce and soda mixture. The batter is thick and spoonable rather than pourable.
- Pan and ovenA greased and lined 9x5 inch loaf tin at 350F, 55 to 70 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and the loaf pulls slightly from the sides. Cool in the tin 10 minutes before turning out.
- Yield and keepingOne loaf, 10 to 12 slices. Like most fruited eggless cakes it improves after a day wrapped in paper, and it slices far more cleanly cold than warm.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, whose head office was in Montreal, to promote its flour, and it was compiled from recipes contributed by users of the flour; the numbered variants ("No. 1") may reflect several contributors sending in versions of the same cake. Eggless cakes of this type were a familiar household economy long before they became patriotic: eggs were seasonal and dear, and fruit puree plus soda will raise a heavy fruited loaf perfectly well. The technique became famous during the First World War, when eggless, butterless and milkless "war cakes" filled the newspapers, but apple sauce cake predates that campaign and outlived it, surviving into Depression-era cookery for the same reason. The candied peel and the optional molasses may suggest a link to the older, richer fruit cakes.