Canada's War Cake
This is Canadian recipe, which was sent to my husband by his grandmother from New Englad. It is a real historical recipe which dates the years 1914.
Grandmothers called this cake- Eggless- Butterless -Milkless. All those staples were available by the special food stamps, no one baked the cakes with eggs, butter or milk duringWW2. The cake would be a nice suggestion for the dinner on Armistice day.
For this Canadian cake you will need
2 cups of brown cane sugar
2 cups of hot water
2 tablespoons of pork lard- MANTECA will be fine
1 teaspoon of kosher salt
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon of ground cloves
1 package seeded raisins 1 lb total- we use Sultana raisins
3 cups of white all purpose wheat flour
Soak the raisins for several hours. Boil the raisins, salt, lard and spice for 3 minutes. Turn of the heat and let it cool down. When cold add 3 cups flour and add into the dough 1 teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in 1 teaspoon of hot water . That much dough makes two loaves of cake. Bake those two loaves for 45 minutes in a slow oven, This cake gets better if lef to rest in the cold pantry and gets better at the end of a week or even longer, as it ripens as all the fruit cakes. Be sure that the boiled of this cake ingredients are really cold before adding the flour and soda, otherwise you will scald your dough.