Growing up I often became an extended family member at certain friend’s homes, and in return, they in mine. Many an afternoon were spent afterschool either playing basketball, video games, and raiding fridges for snacks. One friend in particular was Josh. We became close in high school and would handout just about every Monday night to watch professional wrestling. If we didn’t scrape together enough funds to secure or fix of Taco Bell we had to depend on whatever was in our family’s cupboards and pantries.
On the nights we ended up at Josh’s place, without or beloved 5-layer burritos and nachos bellgrande, we’d had to do what his folks called “fending for ourselves.” Sure they would make dinner, but if our teenage appetite didn’t want what was being served we’d here those words from either his mom or step-dad. “Well boys, looks like you’re fending for ourselves tonight.” We’d dive into cabinets, crack open drawers, and clean out the fridge to see what we could “make do with.”
Depression cakes were an example of “making due.” And while I would never directly link two privileged white kids in the 1990s to those living through the Great Depression at the turn of the 20th century, I do think both instances called for ingenuity and creativity. You use what you have, what you can find, and you make do. For this recipe below, taken from Ronni Lundy’s book Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken, you can see it contains no eggs, milk, or butter.
Ingredients
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Cup of brown sugar, 1/3 cup of vegetable oil, tsp of cinnamon, 1/4 tsp of cloves, 2 cups of dried cherries (the original recipe calls for raisins), 1/8 tsp of salt, and a cup of water.
2 Cups of all purpose flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder, tsp of baking soda, 3 Tbsp of warm water, and 1 cup of chopped nuts (I used walnuts).
You’ve got two sets f ingredients here, one for your wet and dry additions. I like to to get everything on the counter out and separated before I get going.
Gran your sugar, oil, salt, other spices, and water and place them in a saucepan. Bring to boil. Stir to combine and when the mixture comes to a boil turn the the temp down enough to just let it simmer. Do this for at least 5 minutes or so.
At this point you want to remove the saucepan from the stovetop so that it can cool. What I like to do is transfer the contents into another bowl, that way the heat of the saucepan doesn’t prolong the cooling process. I’ve done this a few times now and sometime around the 40 min mark, the mixture is still warm but cooled enough to go to the next step.
Here is where you start to add in your dry ingredients. Grab a bowl and sift your flour and baking powder into it. You’re going to add this to your wet mixture, and I do this by adding a third of the flour/powder at a time, mixing after each addition. When this is good and combined, mix the baking soda and warm water together before adding it to your growing batter. Mix well. Finally, add your chopped walnuts, pecans, or whatever and blend them in as well. It should look something like the pic above.
I use a small Bundt cake pan. You can use a tube pan as well. I spray mine down with a baking spray to ensure the cake doesn’t stick. Make sure the batter is even distributed throughout. Then into the over for 40-50 minutes give or take or until a tester comes out clean.
Remove from oven when baked through and let set 10-15 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
Now here is where you’ve got to make a call; icing or no icing? Either way you still wind up with a good cake. You can do a simple warm water and confectioners’ sugar icing, or you can do a traditional brown sugar one. Lundy takes it up just a notch and introduces a bit of butter. Here is her recommendation,
Icing
1/4 cup of butter, 3 Tbsp of milk (I use half in half because that’s what I had on hand), 2 Tbsp of baking cocoa, cup of confectioners’ sugar, and a tsp of vanilla
Combine butter, milk, and cocoa in a heavy saucepan and get in boiling. I like to add my butter first and get it good and close to melted before adding the other two. Once it boils for a couple of minutes, remove from heat and add in the sugar and vanilla. Beat it until you start seeing the consistency you want.
This go around my icing came out a tad runnier than I would have liked. You probably heard my toddler daughter in the background of the above video, so my attention and need to finish the icing had to be altered!
As is my custom, I cut a small slice to give it a go and then take the rest over to the church with plans to distribute to my neighbors. I got lucky this morning when the administrative assistant located a cake cover that had been stored away in a rarely used cabinet!
Chewing the Fat…
Making do with what one has is easy to say and another thing to experience day in and day out. I for one have been “making do” with all things pandemic/Covid related for over a year now. There’s the universal adjustments of masking and social distancing, but there are specifics to me that hit me on the physical, emotional, and yes, spiritual level.
What does it mean to “make do “physically? Perhaps it’s like rehabbing an injury or adjusting to the fact that your body at 40 doesn’t recuperate as fast as it did at 20.
What does it mean to “make do” emotionally? As a parent of a toddler during this pandemic I’ve learned that some days I just hit an wall or ceiling with my emotions. On the good days, I can process these emotions and share them in constructive ways. On the bad days, well, I tend to need to ask for forgiveness and try and learn to do better.
What does it mean to make do spiritually? Perhaps the pandemic has given me a good sense as to what this might mean. The past year has seen my call stripped of what I thought it was going to be. I transferred seminaries in hopes of establishing the sort of connection I needed in a doctorate program. I’ve recorded Sunday services from my desk at the parsonage, led discussions on the problem of racism from behind a face mask and shield, I’ve preached sermons, including those of Christmas and Easter, to an almost empty sanctuary. In those moments when I feel isolated and empty I'm invited to practice the spiritual discipline of “making do.” If I’m honest though, sometimes the making do can feel like I’m back in Josh’s house hearing his parents say, “fend for yourself.” It’s in those moments that I’m thankful that I discovered a joy of cooking and baking. In those moments I’m thankful for the simple, delicious, satisfying Depression Cake.
For me it’s become a “Decompressing Cake.” Lord knows I need all the help I can get when I find myself making do.
As you were,
~tBSB