Last week, in preparation for the ANZAC Day commemorations, I talked to a group of children about World War One, and showed them several objects associated with the war. We talked about the soldiers serving, but also about what women and children were doing to support the soldiers overseas. I told Roy the children had been fascinated by the idea of making cakes to send to the trenches, and that they had wondered what these cakes must have been like. Roy decided to try his hand at making such a cake, and found a recipe in a 1916 newspaper for ‘Trench Cake’. The resulting cake was a little plain, but tasty and Roy thought the soldiers serving would have been glad to have it. He wanted to share the recipe with his online friends, so this week, Roy Creates World War One Trench Cake.
You Will Need:
- 250 grams of plain flour
- 125 grams of margarine. The original recipe called for lard or dripping, but Roy found that margarine worked fine too
- 1 teaspoon of white vinegar
- 150 millilitres of full cream milk
- 90 grams of brown sugar
- 90 grams of currants
- 2 teaspoons of cocoa
- ½ a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
- ½ a teaspoon of nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon of ginger
- Grated rind of ½ a lemon
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius and prepare a cake tin. Roy used a square tin, but there were no specific sizes included in the recipe – you don’t want one too big though!
- Rub the margarine and flour together, or use a pastry cutter to do this like Roy did
- Add the sugar, currants, cocoa, nutmeg, ginger and lemon rind and mix
- Stir together the bicarbonate of soda and milk until the soda has dissolved
- Add the milk mix to the dry ingredients and beat well (you will have a very thick and sticky batter)
- Put the batter into the tin and spread out
- Bake for between 1 and 2 hours (depending on the size of your tin and how hard and dry you want the cake. The original recipe called for 2 hours, and Roys, which was quite a thin cake, cooked for 1 hour 45 minutes)
- Turn out of the tin and cool on a wire rack
- Store in an airtight container and enjoy with a cup of tea