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Thread: How to bake a First World War trench cake

  1. #1
    Forum Saint
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    Default How to bake a First World War trench cake

    During the First World War people in Britain would bake and post a fruit cake to loved
    ones on the front line. Some traditional cake ingredients were hard to come by.




    There are no eggs in this recipe and vinegar was used to react with the baking soda to
    help the cake rise.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/w...ench-cake.html

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    Forum Saint astral276's Avatar
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    Default Re: How to bake a First World War trench cake

    No eggs... but nutmeg, ginger, and lemon - all of which I would have expected to be harder to source during a war than eggs.


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    Default Re: How to bake a First World War trench cake

    The nutmeg and ginger could have been in cupboards for years....it lasts a long time, and people may have had it prior to the war already. Maybe the lemon was zested and dried and stored? I would have thought the lemon would be the hardest to find......

    I wonder how this tastes?
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    Default Re: How to bake a First World War trench cake

    Quote Originally Posted by HerMajesty View Post
    The nutmeg and ginger could have been in cupboards for years....it lasts a long time, and people may have had it prior to the war already. Maybe the lemon was zested and dried and stored? I would have thought the lemon would be the hardest to find......
    - Yes I would agree that those would seem a lot more difficult to source. The eggs may have been kept for troops or other... however many of that era may have had chickens in the garden even a small yard, continued from Victorian times... and I think for WWII that you were given egg or chicken feed rations...
    Maybe there was a special allowance given out at Christmas to encourage people to make the cake for relatives?


    Ingredients 1/2lb flour

    4 oz margarine

    1 teaspoon vinegar
    1/4 pint of milk
    3 oz brown sugar
    3 oz cleaned currants (cleaned... were they sold dirty or does cleaned mean something else eg deseeded?)
    2 teaspoons cocoa (in a fruit cake!)
    1/2 teaspoon baking soda
    nutmeg
    ginger
    grated lemon rind
    Method
    Grease a cake tin. Rub margarine into the flour in a basin. Add the dry ingredients. Mix well. Add the soda dissolved in vinegar and milk. Beat well. Turn into the tin. Bake in a moderate oven for about two hours.
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    Default Re: How to bake a First World War trench cake

    Dried Fruit was always washed before use until very recently.
    Madelaine

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  6. #6

    Default Re: How to bake a First World War trench cake

    Quote Originally Posted by madelaine View Post
    Dried Fruit was always washed before use until very recently.
    Yes, you are right and I still wash it - old habits dying hard!

    As for eggs - that is a puzzle as many working class people were still keeping chickens in the yard well after WWII! I know they were rationed in that second conflict and we met "dried eggs" for the first time, but we had no egg problem anyway. We lived in a mid terrace house with no rear entrance and still kept chickens.

    Crazy things happened though. I can remember my mother being very puzzled. We children were told to take a large tin to school one day as a food hamper had arrived from Australia. It was cocoa powder!!!

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