Foodish History: Wartime Carrot Cake
The cream-cheese frosted cake I usually cook is a far cry from a wartime carrot cake, as I discovered when I cooked them both. Read MoreI love the way carrot brings moisture and density to a cake, and how you can compliment its natural sweetness with different warming spices and dried fruits or nuts.
I would cook carrot cake much more often if I didn’t get so many complaints from my kids! When I get a hankering for it, I normally use Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s recipe from his River Cottage Everyday cookbook. It’s a simple recipe with not too many ingredients (my favourite kind!) but I modify it a little, by adding a teaspoon of warming chai-style spices for a more complex flavour.
The result is a scrumptious, not-too-sweet cake that is not too dense, but still really moist. I’m a no-walnut kind of girl, but each to his or her own.
Modern and Wartime Carrot Cakes
Usually, I slather the top with cream cheese frosting, add edible rose petals, pistachios for crunch and some orange or lemon zest to make the whole thing pop. This turns a simple cake into something quite extravagant – beautiful to look at as well as a treat for the taste buds. But did you know that such decadence was illegal in wartime England?
Austerity cake
Yup! The Ministry of Food outlawed icing on cakes because it was too wasteful! The Ministry of Food was the government department that rationed food in Britain during the war. They not only controlled supply, they also advocated for the inventive use of ingredients grown in England in the home. They promoted carrot as an extra sweetener in cakes and biscuits to partly replace sugar which was in short supply.
While I was visiting London in 2019, I picked up a little book called Victory in the Kitchen: Wartime Recipes. It contains recipes that came out of the UK’s Ministry of Food during the war. I was interested to check out the carrot cake recipe in the book because I’ve always associated carrot cake with the war. I didn’t expect that the cake I cooked would be so different to a modern carrot cake – but also so delicious in its own way.
Modern ingredients in a WWII recipe
There were some interesting differences between the recipes. The first thing I noticed was that there was much less carrot in the the wartime carrot cake! Even though carrot was being used for both sweetness and flavour, there was barely any carrot in the cake! While my River Cottage recipe uses 3-4 medium carrots (350g), this WWII one calls for less than one (1½ tablespoons of grated carrot or about 100g). It’s like carrot is a novelty ingredient and not a feature. (The WWII recipe doesn’t rely entirely on carrot for sweetness. There is a small portion of sugar as well as dried fruit – I used sultanas soaked in hot water – and ‘syrup’. I’m not sure what that meant in the WWII context – probably golden syrup or malt syrup – but I used maple syrup because I had it to hand.)
This meant that the wartime cake had an entirely different texture to a modern cake. The WWII cake didn’t have the flavour or moisture you would expect in carrot cake. The texture of the WWII one was more like that of a large scone. This is probably due to the method being similar to making good scones. You rub the fat into the flour, combine with the other dry ingredients, then add the wet ingredients, being careful not to over-mix everything.
I used wholemeal rosella flour from Woodstock Flour and spreadable butter, both of which I thought would be similar to the flour and margarine available in the 1940s. The recipe called for a fairly significant portion of oatmeal too (I used quick oats). Carrot and oats were one of the Ministry of Food’s classic combinations during the war, because both those things were grown in Britain and had significant health benefits for the population. I’m fairly sure that British palates deprived of sugar would think the WWII carrot cake was sweet, but it was fairly bland to my modern taste buds. It didn’t taste bad, just plain – much like a scone before additional toppings are added.
Wartime Carrot Cake Recipe
This is the kind of cake Maggie from Heart in the Clouds would be well familiar with. My recipe is adapted from Victory in the Kitchen: Wartime Recipes by the Imperial War Museum, London. The texture of the cake is similar to a scone because of the scone-making method: Rubbing the fat into the dry ingredients, then adding the wet ingredients, being careful not to over-mix everything. It makes a much smaller cake than you would expect of a modern recipe, requiring only a shallow 20cm tin (the kind used for a sponge or layer cakes). It’s delicious with butter and apricot jam or a lemon and icing sugar glaze…just don’t let Ministry of Food catch you doing that!
Ingredients
- 180g plain flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 90g quick cook oats
- 1 ½ tablespoons caster sugar
- 90g margarine
- 100g grated carrot
- 1 tablespoons sultanas, soaked in water or juice until plump
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup
- Water
Instructions
- Place flour, baking powder, oats and sugar into a small mix bowl, then add in margarine and rub between fingers until all the margarine is distributed through the flours and the texture if like bread crumbs.
- Add carrots and sultanas and mix through.
- In a separate bowl, mix together egg and maple syrup.
- Add wet ingredients to dry ones with enough water to form a stiff consistency. Careful not to overmix.
- Transfers into a greased tin, 20cm in diameter. Bake at 180°C for 45 minutes, giving extra 5 minute bursts if the cake isn’t golden and cook through when that time is up.
This piece was originally published as “A Tale of Two Carrot Cakes” on my copywriting site.
