How to Make the War Cake That Fed Millions

During World War 1, baking ingredients, such as flour, butter, eggs, and sugar, were rationed or in short supply. So, making creative use of the ingredients they had, home cooks of that era baked War Cake, and that’s the innovative recipe that I’m excited to show you today.

This recipe helped home cooks make a flavorful dessert for their families during WWI, and thanks to their ingenuity, they created a recipe that continued to be popular through the Great Depression and World War 2. This War Cake recipe fed millions, and it is still popular today.

What Is War Cake?

War Cake (sometimes referred to as Poor Man’s Boiled Raisin Cake) is a simple round or loaf pan style quick bread that shares the characteristics of peanut butter bread or banana bread. It’s sweet like cake but forgoes the layers and icing typical of what many of us think of when we hear the term cake. However, even though this simple quick bread may lack icing, it is a delicious cake that is both tender and moist thanks to the boiled raisins.

War Cake owes its popularity due to its tastiness and because it uses cheap yet nutritious ingredients. It’s still made today because it requires no eggs and no butter, so it’s a cost-effective and delicious dessert to enjoy anytime, especially during these inflationary times!

What Type of Fat Is Used to Make War Cake?

With the food rationing during World War 1, home cooks had to be very clever when cooking or baking with the ingredients that were available to them. They used every last bit of food in some way, and all fat—whether rendered from a bit of bacon, some ground beef, or a roast chicken—was put to good use in various ways when cooking.

My maternal grandmother Louise was occasionally able to buy a leg of mutton (older sheep meat) during times of rationing. Mutton was more available to her and less expensive than beef. So when she slow roasted a leg of mutton to tenderize it, she saved all the fat that was rendered from it. She used this fat to sauté vegetables and make baked goods.

In this War Cake recipe, I use my saved bacon grease as my animal fat ingredient. Would using animal fats from bacon or mutton impart a taste to baked goods? Yes, but thanks to the use of lots of spices in their recipes, as with this War Cake recipe, home cooks were able to hide the taste of animal fats in their baked goods.

What Type of Sweetener Is Used to Make War Cake?

Making use of the ingredients readily available to home cooks during WWI and The Great Depression, this War Cake recipe uses molasses instead of sugar as a sweetener. (I used unsulphured molasses, not blackstrap. Alternatively, you can use honey or another liquid sweetener.) As I explain in this section, white sugar was hard to come by, so home cooks had to be creative.

Making the Most of the Ingredients You Have

I remember the stories my parents shared with me of living during The Great Depression. Their experiences with hardship and scarcity left such an impression on me. My mom made many of the recipes she grew up with, and I learned the importance of not wasting and creatively using the ingredients we had.

Since I first helped my mom in her kitchen, I’ve always been interested in the home cook’s experience during The Great Depression and both world wars. As I researched the recipes of these eras, I was fascinated to learn the various ways home cooks conserved their use of white sugar by using alternative sweeteners.

During The Great Depression, white sugar was expensive, and during WWI and WWII, sugar was tightly controlled through rationing. Much of the white sugar processed in the United States was sent overseas to use in baked goods to feed the troops and our allies.

When home cooks were able to acquire some white sugar, they generally reserved it for their home canning needs since sugar is an essential ingredient in preserves. So they had to be creative when it came to baking or sweetening a cooked dish.

Choosing An Alternative Sweetener

The good news was that molasses was readily available and cheap, which was a godsend for families during the Depression. Molasses contains more nutrients than white sugar, and its availability during the war made it a go-to sweetener for many home cooks.

Additionally, depending on where in the United States families lived, home cooks could also choose from alternate sweeteners, such as syrups made from sorghum or barley. Honey was another acceptable alternative to white sugar.

Another popular way for home cooks to sweeten baked goods was to simmer fresh or dried fruit in water and allow the water to evaporate and concentrate to create a sweet syrup. Raisins were often used in this way, as we are using them to sweeten our War Cake.

Home cooks often used stewed prunes to create a rich sweet syrup similar to molasses. I remember my mother still doing this well into the 1970s by regularly stewing prunes and enjoying the sticky sweet syrup drizzled over the plumped prunes or as a complement to a bit of vanilla ice cream.

Whatever alternative sweetener option home cooks chose to use, the good news is that they were using a healthier alternative than plain white sugar. So along with using alternate flours, these alternate sweeteners made nutritious baked goods. So when you make this War Cake, just like they did back in the 1910s or 1940s, you can enjoy it guilt free!

What Type of Flour Is Used to Make War Cake?

White flour or plain flour, what we commonly know today as all-purpose flour, was heavily rationed during both world wars. The US government needed to send the flour overseas to feed our troops and allies. So this scarcity of plain flour required home cooks to learn how to bake with alternate types of flour.

The most common flours available in the US during the world war included:

• Barley
• Buckwheat
• Cornmeal
• Oats
• Rye

This recipe for War Cake uses whole-grain rye flour and old-fashioned rolled oats. The oats help create a lighter texture to offset the use of the whole grain flour. And by substituting all-purpose flour with these whole grain alternatives, we are creating a much healthier cake, which makes it the perfect treat to serve our family and friends in our traditional foods kitchen.

Today, you can buy rye flour at most grocery stores, but to make this recipe even more economical, I grind my whole grain rye groats (rye berries) into freshly milled flour. These rye groats are less expensive to purchase than store-bought rye flour.

Grind Your Own Flour with the Mockmill

To grind my rye groats or berries, I could use my manual or electric grain mill. Since it’s much easier to grind grain to make flour with an electric grain mill, I keep my manual grain mill as a backup.

When it comes to electric grain mills, after I did A LOT of research, I decided to buy a Mockmill. And am I so happy I did! The Mockmill is a very affordable but beautifully crafted German-made mill that stone grinds grain with settings ranging from 1 to 10—fine to coarse ground grain. (I describe why I like to use setting 5 in my War Cake recipe video.)

And I have great news! The folks at Mockmill are very kind to offer my viewers and readers a special one-time discount on any of the grain mills that they sell.

• Use my affiliate link for a special one-time 5% discount on Mockmill Stone Grain Mill products. (The discount will appear when you checkout.)

Note: You can also get the new Flake Lover’s Flaker from Mockmill. Using this device, you can flake whole grain in minutes.

You can see me unbox and try out the Mockmill 100 Grain mill in the following video. (This is not a sponsored post, I bought the Mockmill products that I show you, and I’m a happy user of their devices in my kitchen.)

More Information About WWI Recipes

For more information about War Cake and WWI recipes, visit the following resources that I talk about in today’s video:

• The American Experience: Victory Recipes of the Great War (Includes recipe cards)
• War Economy in Food With Suggestions and Recipes for Substitutions in the Planning of Meals (Scanned copy in Google books)

And if you’d like to browse more WWI posters and references, visit the US Library of Congress.

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Recommended Reading

• How to Cook a Wolf