Emily's Wartime Berry Shortbread & VE Day Tea Party

It's the 75th Anniversary of the end of the war in Europe!

Happy VE Day! Today marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe, and I've been looking forward to this day literally all year. Longer than a year, because what a good opportunity to revisit some of my favorite wartime recipes with a celebratory party with historian friends! 

Unfortunately, the party turned into me, my wife, and our cat (and Molly and Emily), but I think we still managed to make it a nice occasion. Read on to see more pictures, and learn how to make this simple, ration friendly twist on shortbread.

Molly's Sweet Potato Victory Cake

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!

Emily's Uncooked Chocolate Cake

No eggs, no milk, no bake, no fuss!

Happy VE Day, everyone! Did you know VE Day and Christmas are the only two holidays I’ve always done posts for on this blog? Hopefully now that I’m finished with grad school I can add a few others to the list of “I need to do this post every year.” 

That’s right, I’m officially done with grad school! It was quite the experience, and my friends and I were all kind of desperate for a way to let off some steam and take our minds off our final projects. I also wanted to dive back in with a weird, historical recipe for this VE Day, so I did some digging around and discovered one that’s easy to make and can be thrown together from ingredients that are probably already in your pantry! Win, win, right? Read on to find out more.

Molly's Honey Cookies for VE Day

Help the war effort with this clever sugar substitute!

Happy VE Day everyone! In keeping with tradition, I've decided to fire up my oven and throw together a mini VE Day bash, this time with a couple of my friends from grad school. We're going to watch the new documentary Five Came Back on Netflix, which I've heard good things about. I've read the book it's based on, and I enjoyed that quite a lot, so hopefully it's good!

To give some authentic 1940's flair to our get together, I turned to a cookbook I've been dying to try out.

Molly Visits the National WWII Museum and Makes D-Ration Chocolate Bars

Or: Gwen visited the National WWII Museum and Never Wanted to Leave!

Happy VE Day! Have I got a post for you.

Brace yourselves, guys. This is going to be a long one.

I have been impatiently trying to figure out a time to visit the National World War II Museum for a long time. Shocking, right? I figure by now all of you are familiar with my enthusiasm for this chapter in American (and world) history. I'm not really sure how I first found out about the museum, but I've been plotting and planning to make this trip happen for a while, and this past March, I got to make that dream come true! I spent two days there: one with my family, one by myself, and while I'm pretty sure I saw literally every thing there is to see in the museum, I wouldn't have complained if I spent the last day of our trip there as well.

Just like our past trips to places like the FDR Presidential Library in Hyde Park, or John Adams' homes in Quincy, Massachusetts, I thought it would be fun to tell you all about the museum, and feature a recipe that had to do with out trip. I'm going to tell you right up front that this museum totally deserves its spot as one of the best museums in the world, and absolutely has to be a part of any trip to New Orleans you might be making in the future.

Why is it in New Orleans, you might wonder?

Emily's Celebration Trifle

A time consuming, but surprisingly tasty wartime treat!

Happy VE Day, everyone! May 8th, 1945 marks the 70th anniversary of the formal surrender of Nazi Germany, a day celebrated all over the world back in 1945... except maybe in certain parts of the Pacific, where Allied troops were still engaged in deadly combat and would be for the better part of two months. But for civilians and troops in Europe and on other Allied home fronts, today was a day to party, and parties always mean good food.

But for countries that had been at war for the better part of a decade, good food wasn't always easy to find between rationing and shortages. England in particular was a nation without much by way of luxury food items - being an island nation at war with an enemy that had a tight grip on shipping lines for years made shipping in supplies difficult, and shortages didn't improve even after the Battle of the Atlantic had been won and supplies from the US and Canada could come across the ocean. Each person was allowed one egg per week, so deciding how those real eggs would be used became very, very difficult. Even making icing for cake was illegal, as it was considered wasteful!

On VE Day, all those attitudes about stretching your rations and forbidding wasteful food went out the window for people in England. Communities pooled together to bake cake with the previously forbidden icing, make sandwiches and concoct unique sweets like carrots dipped in melted sugar and eaten like a lollipop in one big explosion of fun and excitement, and one of those recipes is what we're going to be looking at today.

This recipe is a war time version of a classic British dessert, which was kind of a hard sell to my family, but ultimately turned out to be a pretty big hit. Our enthusiasm wasn't exactly the same level as it would have been if we were back in 1945, but I don't think it was a stretch for anyone to be able to see how this would have been an incredibly indulgent, satisfying way to celebrate the end of the most devastating conflict in human history.

Molly's Chocolate War Cake

You'll never need a box mix ever again!

Happy VE Day, everyone! It's been sixty nine years since the war in Europe ended - can you believe that? I definitely can't! I also can't quite wrap my mind around how we're almost to the point where World War II is as far away to us as the Civil War was to people in 1945. To me, it seems like World War II really wasn't that long ago

When the news of victory in Europe reached the American public, spontaneous parties broke out all over the world, with huge crowds gathering in the streets of cities like London, New York and Los Angeles to celebrate. In my hometown, people stormed the town green to share their excitement, because apparently even if we don't all bring our sheep down there for grazing, it's still the focal point of this little New England town.

So, what did people make to celebrate an occasion like this? One of the tastiest from scratch cakes I've ever had the pleasure of making!