Turning to your victory garden for VE Day inspiration!
Happy VE Day everyone! Since starting this blog, there are two holidays I’ve always posted about without fail: Christmas, and VE Day. That wasn’t intentional – in a perfect world, I’d love to have a lot of Halloween and Hanukkah recipes too! – but one thing or another has always seemed to get in the way of posting consistently for every holiday.
That was very nearly the case here as well! These past few days have been an absolute whirlwind. After a quick trip home to New England for a bridal shower hosted by my lovely aunts, Jessi and I put the finishing touches on our massive scrapbooks/photo albums for Jess’s Green Card interview and drove up to Baltimore yesterday. The interview went great, but we were both exhausted when we got home. I dragged out my cookbook and managed to make the cake before crawling into bed and staying there for the rest of the night. The rest of this post was done on VE Day proper after work… and hopefully made it out in time to still be called a VE Day post!
This cake is an interesting wartime treat from a cookbook filled with similarly interesting wartime desserts. Read on to see how you can make it for yourself!
That was very nearly the case here as well! These past few days have been an absolute whirlwind. After a quick trip home to New England for a bridal shower hosted by my lovely aunts, Jessi and I put the finishing touches on our massive scrapbooks/photo albums for Jess’s Green Card interview and drove up to Baltimore yesterday. The interview went great, but we were both exhausted when we got home. I dragged out my cookbook and managed to make the cake before crawling into bed and staying there for the rest of the night. The rest of this post was done on VE Day proper after work… and hopefully made it out in time to still be called a VE Day post!
This cake is an interesting wartime treat from a cookbook filled with similarly interesting wartime desserts. Read on to see how you can make it for yourself!
As we all know by now, VE Day marks the end of the war in Europe, and was celebrated worldwide as a sign that soon peace would return to most of the world. This year, I turned to yet another cookbook I’ve wanted to try out for what feels like forever, but haven’t had a chance to until just now. Grandma’s Wartime Baking is the sequel to Grandma’s Wartime Kitchen, another cookbook I’d like to get my paws on one of these days. Both are written by Joanne Lamb Hayes, a cookbook author with a Ph.D. from New York University's Department of Nutrition and Food Studies. This book (and its sibling) have been on my radar for a long time, and Wartime Kitchen was apparently named one of the best cookbooks of the year by People magazine, which is pretty neat. My mom gifted me my copy for Christmas of this year, and I immediately earmarked it as something I wanted to break out in time for VE Day.
The book is filled with a lot of really promising sounding dessert recipes, including cookies, tarts, and of course, cakes! This recipe for Sweet Potato Victory Cake caught my eye because I’m actually planning on doing a second sweet potato recipe this month, and wanted to compare how baking with it changes the texture and flavor of your final product. It’s called a victory cake because it’s assuming your sweet potatoes are coming from your victory garden, not necessarily because you’re making it for VE or VJ Day, but it still felt pretty fitting.
To get started, you need a cup of mashed sweet potatoes that are still warm. I went about doing this in possibly the stupidest, most time consuming fashion because I was crashing hard from the anxiety of prepping for the interview, but after some hassle I did end up with a cup of smashed root.
The book is filled with a lot of really promising sounding dessert recipes, including cookies, tarts, and of course, cakes! This recipe for Sweet Potato Victory Cake caught my eye because I’m actually planning on doing a second sweet potato recipe this month, and wanted to compare how baking with it changes the texture and flavor of your final product. It’s called a victory cake because it’s assuming your sweet potatoes are coming from your victory garden, not necessarily because you’re making it for VE or VJ Day, but it still felt pretty fitting.
To get started, you need a cup of mashed sweet potatoes that are still warm. I went about doing this in possibly the stupidest, most time consuming fashion because I was crashing hard from the anxiety of prepping for the interview, but after some hassle I did end up with a cup of smashed root.
This goes into a bowl with 2/3 of a cup of white sugar, three tablespoons of lemon juice, a teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/4 of a cup of vegetable shortening, 1/4 of a teaspoon of nutmeg, and 1/4 of a teaspoon of salt. You’re supposed to beat this together on high and add two eggs one at a time, but in my post-interview haze, I added the eggs in at the same time and beat everything all together on high until it was mixed together. Not my finest hour.
Next, pour two teaspoons of baking powder and 1 1/2 cups of flour on top of your wet ingredients. Beat this on low until just combined, and then pour it into a 9 x 9 cake pan that’s been greased and dusted with flour. This goes into a 350 degree oven for about 30-35 minutes.
Mine was done cooking at the 35 minute mark exactly, which is rare for my oven. Usually I need a few more minutes to get the center nice and baked up.
The cookbook recommends serving it warm with powdered sugar on top, or cold with frosting. There are three or four frosting recipes suggested in the book, including a marshmallow based topping which sounds pretty fitting for a sweet potato cake (think sweet potato casserole!), but I went for powdered sugar because I’m boring and was way too tired to think about whipping up a fancy frosting. I think the end result still looks nice, though!
So, how did it taste?
So, how did it taste?
Longtime readers will know I’m a big defender of wartime cakes. My favorite recipe I’ve ever made for this blog is my first VE Day recipe – a chocolate war cake I’ve made dozens of times since writing that post. But this one didn’t really impress me when I first tried it, and I think there’s two reasons for that.
First, sweet potatoes, cinnamon and nutmeg are so heavily associated with holiday cooking and baking that I went into the bite expecting a spice cake, and instead I got a spice cake with quite a bit of lemon flavor. Not exactly a bad thing! Lemon icing on spice cookies can definitely be a good thing, but it’s always a little alarming to bite into something expecting one flavor and getting hit in the mouth by another.
Second, the texture wasn’t amazing. This could definitely be my fault, as I may have overmixed the batter a little, but the resulting product was a little doughy and gummy. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it definitely wasn’t the best cake I’ve ever made. Were I really a wartime chef, I would definitely be happy putting this one aside once the war was over and other ingredients became more plentiful.
However! After putting it in the fridge and trying some with the wife, we both agreed it tasted less lemony once it had some time to cool and marinate in the fridge. The spices and sweet potato were a lot more noticeable, and the texture wasn't as bad when it was cool. That said, Jessi and I both agreed that it was a little one note, and not really a favorite. It could definitely do with some toasted nuts, more spice, some chopped apple... or maybe all of the above!
So overall, not a horrible experiment, but not really one I’d be willing to make again over some of the tastier treats I’ve made in the past. There are a lot of really good wartime cake recipes out there, and this one just couldn’t beat them in a taste test.
Finally, a note about the cookbook itself – it’s a good cookbook, and I’m definitely eager to try out some of the other recipes, but I’ll admit to feeling a little disappointed by it all the same. A lot of the reviews made it sound like there would be plenty of information about where these recipes came from, but most are just presented as being wartime without original citations to cookbooks, pamphlets, or government publications. There are some historical factoids and points of interest, and I don’t really have reason to doubt that these recipes were taken from or at least inspired by period cookbooks, but the historian in me is always more satisfied when I’ve got a citation to something I could look up or track down myself. This is also fun because if it’s a cookbook, I might be able to get my hands on my own copy, which could introduce me to a whole bunch of other fun recipes to try!
Admittedly, this is something a lot of “historical” cookbooks do, and again, I’m definitely not saying that Hayes didn’t do her homework when writing this or Wartime Kitchen. If you’re looking for a good cookbook that has adaptations or republications of wartime recipes, this is definitely one to consider and is a lot better than some of the other 1940’s inspired cookbooks out there… including some that are just republished recipes from the period!
First, sweet potatoes, cinnamon and nutmeg are so heavily associated with holiday cooking and baking that I went into the bite expecting a spice cake, and instead I got a spice cake with quite a bit of lemon flavor. Not exactly a bad thing! Lemon icing on spice cookies can definitely be a good thing, but it’s always a little alarming to bite into something expecting one flavor and getting hit in the mouth by another.
Second, the texture wasn’t amazing. This could definitely be my fault, as I may have overmixed the batter a little, but the resulting product was a little doughy and gummy. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it definitely wasn’t the best cake I’ve ever made. Were I really a wartime chef, I would definitely be happy putting this one aside once the war was over and other ingredients became more plentiful.
However! After putting it in the fridge and trying some with the wife, we both agreed it tasted less lemony once it had some time to cool and marinate in the fridge. The spices and sweet potato were a lot more noticeable, and the texture wasn't as bad when it was cool. That said, Jessi and I both agreed that it was a little one note, and not really a favorite. It could definitely do with some toasted nuts, more spice, some chopped apple... or maybe all of the above!
So overall, not a horrible experiment, but not really one I’d be willing to make again over some of the tastier treats I’ve made in the past. There are a lot of really good wartime cake recipes out there, and this one just couldn’t beat them in a taste test.
Finally, a note about the cookbook itself – it’s a good cookbook, and I’m definitely eager to try out some of the other recipes, but I’ll admit to feeling a little disappointed by it all the same. A lot of the reviews made it sound like there would be plenty of information about where these recipes came from, but most are just presented as being wartime without original citations to cookbooks, pamphlets, or government publications. There are some historical factoids and points of interest, and I don’t really have reason to doubt that these recipes were taken from or at least inspired by period cookbooks, but the historian in me is always more satisfied when I’ve got a citation to something I could look up or track down myself. This is also fun because if it’s a cookbook, I might be able to get my hands on my own copy, which could introduce me to a whole bunch of other fun recipes to try!
Admittedly, this is something a lot of “historical” cookbooks do, and again, I’m definitely not saying that Hayes didn’t do her homework when writing this or Wartime Kitchen. If you’re looking for a good cookbook that has adaptations or republications of wartime recipes, this is definitely one to consider and is a lot better than some of the other 1940’s inspired cookbooks out there… including some that are just republished recipes from the period!
Happy VE Day!
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