Economical Spice Cake

This recipe is from my mother’s recipe box – the card yellowed with age and spattered with batter flung from the beaters of inexperienced junior bakers.  It was considered to be economical because the egg was optional, and I suspect that the buttermilk that it calls for was actually the whey left from churning butter, as opposed to the cultured variety we use today.  In a pinch, you can also use water with a couple of drops of vinegar, or plain milk with vinegar, but it’s better with buttermilk.  The original recipe calls for shortening, but we always just used vegetable oil.

Makes 1 square 8" or 9" or 11x7" pan
Total prep and cooking time:  65 minutes

1½  scant cups flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon allspice

¼ teaspoon powdered cloves

1 cup raisins

½ cup shortening or canola oil*

1 cup brown sugar, packed

1 cup buttermilk

1 egg (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350˚ F.  Grease and dust with flour a 9 x 9” baking pan (note: we often used a Pyrex 11x7” and we didn’t flour it).

Sift together the flour, salt, soda, baking powder, and spices.  Add the raisins, and stir them through to coat well with flour.

In a mixing bowl, cream oil (or shortening ) and sugar for 2½ minutes.  Scrape the sides of the bowl down.  Add 1/3 flour mixture alternately with ½ the buttermilk, ending with the final portion of flour.  Beat between each addition, but only just until blended.  It shouldn’t take longer than 3 minutes to add everything.

Pour into prepared pan.  Bake for approximately 45 minutes, or until a toothpick or cake skewer comes out clean and the cake has started to pull away from the sides of the pan.  Cool in the pan.  This makes a great snack cake as is, but the recipe also suggests that you frost the cake with Easy Caramel Frosting.  I don’t think I have the recipe for that one, though.


* You can also use a mixture of half canola oil and half applesauce, if you want to reduce the fat.  Not that this is a particularly rich dish, as it is, though…

 

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