Wartime Carrot Cake
During WW2, Sugar was rationed to 8oz per week. (only 1 cup PER WEEK!)
Americans were forced to completely halt or drastically cut their consumption of sugar, and were allotted to a certain small amount per month.
You could not buy certain items in grocery stores without your ration coupons! CAN YOU IMAGINE??? (Saturday Evening Post asked if you could survive another sugar rationing)
But for cooks who were coming out of the depression, this was another challenge that called for solutions! Enter the era of substitutions and out of the box cooking. Ration recipes and cookbooks helped the housewives of America learn to use responsibly, patriotically, frugally and creatively.
With limited amounts of sugar, carrots were often used as a way to naturally sweeten breads, cakes, biscuits and even cookies.
The American People endured sugar rationing for 5 long years, and that era produced some prime examples of good old fashioned ingenuity in the kitchen.
THE RECIPE
This recipe is posted exactly as written.
8 oz Self-rising flour
3oz margarine or cooking fat
3 oz sugar
4 oz finely grated carrot
2oz sultanas**
a little milk or water
1 reconstituted dried egg, or 1 fresh egg if obtainable
directions
preheat oven to 425F
Sift the flour into a mixing bowl, then rub in the margarine or cooking fat.
Add your sugar, grated carrot, sultanas and egg.
Mix well, then add sufficient milk or water to make sticky,.
Pour mixture into a lined baking tin, and bake until golden in color.
**What the heck are sultanas?
Sultanas are a dried golden raisin fruit, similar to currants and regular raisins.
