I keep hearing that eggs are in short supply in grocery stores right now. Ironically, in 1906 people would find it difficult to find fresh eggs in early April too. So I’m going to use Mrs. August May‘s recipe for Fruit Cake (without eggs) from the 1906 Berlin Cook Book. The plan is to serve this as part of my Easter dinner tomorrow … if all goes well.
I decided to make this fruit cake like any other by creaming the 1/2 cup of butter and the 1½ cups of brown sugar. My brown sugar was quite hard so I left it to sit a bit in the butter to soften. Next I added the 1 cup of sour milk. These day we have to artificially sour milk so I added 1 teaspoon of vinegar to the milk. I mixed the spices and baking soda with the flour and then added the raisins to it. Flouring the raisins this way helps them stay dispersed in the cake instead of sinking to the bottom. Finally I added the dry mixture to the wet and stirred well. I spooned the thick batter into a greased loaf pan. I’d preheated the oven to 350° F. so it was nice and hot for baking. I let the cake bake for 30 minutes before peeking at it. It needed another 30 minutes before it was close to ready. I left it to cool a bit and then took it out of the pan to cool further. Finally it was time to taste.
Mrs. August May was in her 40s when she shared her recipe for fruit cake. She was born Hannah Hertel and married August May when she was —-. Her mother was Mennonite but her father was a German born Lutheran. Hannah was listed as a servant before her marriage. She was the second youngest of eight children in her family. She had six children. In 1911 she and her husband were were living at 30 Ellen Street West in Berlin with five of their six children. But by 1916 Hannah and two of the children show up on the special Western census as residents of Main Street in Kindersley, Saskastchewan. Her son Alton is a teller in a bank and her daughter Hannah Jr. is a saleslady in a store. Interestingly the man her daughter will eventually marry is their boarder. However, I have no idea — yet — how they ended up out there. The 1921 census shows Hannah and August living with their daughter Viola and her family.
The fruit cake smelled good and so did my kitchen! The spices are an important part of this cake. I would suggest tasting the batter to help adjust the spices. My container of ground cloves was new and so that taste dominates. I like cloves but you might want to ease back a bit on this spice if its not a favourite. I don’t recommend baking this cake as a loaf. I think a cake pan would be better. This is not the dense fruit cake found at Christmas instead it is more a spice cake. I ate my slice of fruit cake warm and liked it. I think it will taste just as good cold. Modern cooks could make this vegan using a vegan margarine instead of butter. I think right now this is a great choice if you want cake but are out of eggs. Rather like war cakes of the past perhaps this is a pandemic cake.
FRUIT CAKE (without eggs)
Mrs. August May
1 ½ cups of brown sugar, ½ cup of butter, 1 cup sour milk, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon cloves, 1 teaspoon allspice, 1 teaspoon soda, 1 cup chopped raisins, 3 cups flour.
366dayswiththeberlincookbook 