In many ways it seems like post pandemic supply chain issues we are experiencing today are reminiscent of WWII supply chain issues. Back in the nineteen-forties many shoppers found empty store shelves and had to improvise to create healthy, tasty meals. To help ease the shortages, food producers reformulated recipes to use less of those ingredients which were in short supply. Eggs were among those items in short supply.
Adding to today’s supply chain issues is avian flu. It’s creating egg shortages in our own time. Thankfully, those eggless recipes from Rosie’s day are as helpful today as they were in her time.
Gayle Martin
EGGLESS UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE
- 2 tablespoons butter or margarine
- 1/3 to ½ cup brown sugar, firmly packed
- 1 ½ cups canned pineapple wedges, peach slices, or cooked prunes
- ½ cup broken pecan meats, if desired
- 1 recipe Delicious Cottage Pudding (below)
Melt butter in 8 x 8 x 2-inch pan or 8-inch skillet over low flame. Add brown sugar and cook and stir until thoroughly mixed. On this arrange fruit; sprinkle nuts over top.
Mix Delicious Cottage Pudding batter below as directed and pour over contents of pan. Bake in moderate oven (350º F) 50 to 60 minutes, or until done. Loosen cake from sides of pan with spatula. Turn upside down on dish with fruit on top.
DELICIOUS COTTAGE PUDDING
- 2 cups cake flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder*
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 3 tablespoons shortening
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup milk
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
Sift flour once, add baking powder and salt, and sift again. Cream shortening, add sugar gradually, and cream together well. Add flour, alternately with milk, a small amount at a time, beating after each addition until smooth. Add vanilla. Bake in greased pan, 8 x 8 x 2 inches, in moderate oven, (350F), 50 to 60 minutes, or until done.
*Note: At the time this recipe was written not all baking powders were double-acting. Less baking powder may be needed.
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Imagine the government telling you how much meat or chicken you could buy, or how much sugar or flour you could have. Strange as it may seem, at one time it actually happened. During WWII, the United States government devised a food rationing program to help insure that every family would have enough to eat. Rosie’s Riveting Recipes gives a glimpse into life on the WW II home front. A cookbook and a history lesson in one with more than 180 economical, back-to-basics World WarII ration recipes with short tales of life on the American home front interspersed throughout.
Rosie’s Riveting Recipes is available on Amazon, Barnesandnoble.com and with other online booksellers.