Found Recipe: Grape Layer Cake

I did literally find this recipe. It was in a recipe box placed as decoration in the kitchen of a suite at the Wellington Inn in Traverse City, Michigan (a lovely place, if you ever visit TC.) I found it sad to think that someone's beloved recipes had found their way into the hands of strangers, and resolved to document the find in photographs. Hopefully, many years in the future, someone might do the same for me.

I wonder though, who was the lady that made this cake? She had nice penmanship, just like my Grandma Nina's. Maybe her name was Irene or Gladys or Muriel, one of those names you rarely hear anymore. A woman well into middle age, yet still dedicated to the domestic arts on a daily basis, she made this cake for her bridge club, garden club, or a church supper sometime after the War. Maybe, just for fun, she wore an apron with purple flowers on it while she baked, and wondered if, when she got older, she might like to have a violet rinse in her hair, like the lady across the street. She cut the cake with a Bakelite cake server, and put it on the special plates she kept in the china cabinet for special occasions, like Sunday dinner. Baking made her feel good. She wouldn't have said it made her feel creative - that was not a word she would use as we use it today. This cake made her feel happy - if happy meant thrifty and generous and humble and proud at the same time. This helped her with the things that life brought unbidden. It was something she had learned during the War, with the bad news coming day after day and the need for solid comfort in any corner. There would not have been any sugar or eggs for the cake then, but she had learned to work around the rationing. Now, she might use butter, but the Spry made for a light cake, and it was inexpensive. The part she liked best was seeing the first slice of cake floating on one of those pink plates. The violet filling and the fluffy frosting made her think of clouds and raindrops waiting to fall through them. Perhaps it would rain tonight. That is what the man on the farm report had said at noon. Best to get out the cake carrier. It would keep the frosting from running into puddles on her way to Lucille's house.

Grape Layer Cake


Grape Layer Cake by Josephine2004, on Flickr

Note: I have reproduced these recipes as written, no need to add (sic)s all over the place!

1/2 cup spry
3/4 teasp. salt
1/2 teasp. vanilla
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 3/4 cup flour

3 teasp. baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
4 eggs

Blend spry, salt and vanilla. Add sugar gradually and cream well. Sift flour with Baking Pder 3 times. Add flour to cream mixture, alternating with milk & water mixing each time until smooth

This is where the cake portion of the recipe ends. I could not find the second half of the recipe on the back of the card, or on another card. It might be that this is how to handle the next steps, though I invite expert bakers to chime in here: Beat in the eggs one at a time. Bake in 2 cake tins lined with parchment or coated with melted spry and flour. 350 degree oven, probably. Until done, about 28 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

Grape Filling


Grape Filling by Josephine2004, on Flickr

Scald 1/2 cup grape juice & 1/2 cup water in top of double boiler. Mix 3 tabsp cornstarch, 1/4 teasp salt - 1/2 cup sugar Add to grape juice and cook until thick. Add 1/4 cup lemon juice & 1 tabsp. butter - cool


Grape Frosting


Grape Frosting by Josephine2004, on Flickr

Mix 1 unbeaten egg white, 3/4 cup sug-ar, 3 tabsp. [tablespoons] grape juice and 1/2 teasp. [teaspoons] light corn sirup in top of double boiler. Place over rapidly boiling water and beat with egg beater until mixture will hold a peak (about 3 min) Remove from heat and beat until thick enough to spread.


Serve on pretty plates with properly ironed napkins to your neighbors, the people that know all about you and whose lives are much like your own in many ways but who don't yet have this recipe for Grape Layer Cake.

Very interesting, and thanks for the "translation" as I could not make out all of the recipe. And spry? I had to follow your link . . . never heard of it. The handwriting looks like it's right out of a movie - The Help (but maybe from the north?).

My only disappointment Josephine is that when I got to the end of the post, I didn't see a picture of the finished cake you baked and frosted. . . I hope to. Sounds very interesting.

Josephine -- I love the picture you paint of the imagined person and history behind that cake. It's just lovely, and it made me feel a little sad and a bit nostalgic -- though nostalgic for a time I didn't actually live through, other than in movies. But I love the woman you described, and the real women who lived and baked and felt what you described. Really evocative and moving. Thank you.

That looks almost exactly like my grandma's writing. I printed this out to use later. Thanks!

Hi,

I guessed 'Spry' was a vegetable shortening product, then googled to confirm:

Wikipedia wrote:Spry was a brand of vegetable shortening produced by Lever Brothers starting in 1936. It was a competitor for Procter & Gamble's Crisco, and through aggressive marketing through its mascot Aunt Jenny had reached 75 percent of Crisco's market share. The marketing efforts were phased out in the 1950s, but Aunt Jenny and her quotes like With Spry, we can afford to have cake oftener! have been reprinted.[1]

This would be one lovely cake to encounter at a State Fair!

I am waiting for the day when my hair goes all-white. I fully intend to get blue rinsed and styled to look like a towering thunderstorm cloud. My hair stylist has already been warned to look up how to use blue rinse. I never saw violet, though I have did see plenty of pink. Oh to be my Tante Teresa with the blue rinse hair!

Regards,

BR wrote:My only disappointment Josephine is that when I got to the end of the post, I didn't see a picture of the finished cake you baked and frosted. . . I hope to. Sounds very interesting.

Maybe I'll bring it to the picnic. . . I'd be able to rationalize the purchase of that vintage cake carrier that way!

Pie Lady wrote:That looks almost exactly like my grandma's writing. I printed this out to use later. Thanks!

Yes! the handwriting that they all learned in school. It's a shame that it will not be taught any more.

Thanks for the kind words, Cynthia. I just kind of channeled my grandmother and her twin sister and some of the women who must have contributed to the church cookbooks they put together. I heard a lot as a kid about the Dust Bowl and the War Years. There is a little bit of them that made its way into me and my musings about cooking, too. Nostalgia has a powerful grip at times, doesn't it? As Cathy has pointed out, that is in fact the thing we hope to tap into at the Heirloom Recipe Contests for the Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance. We don't want these recipes and the people that perfected them to disappear - there's too much richness there.

And Cathy- I think the blue or violet rinse would be quite flattering on you!

Josephine,

This is so, so lovely. My eyes are welling up. I can't wait to eat this cake. If you are bringing it to the picnic, then I won't try the recipe myself. I'm waiting to have a piece of yours. Oh, please make sure someone takes pictures of the cake before you cut it and of a slice.

Such an iconic piece of American culinary history. Really, thanks for sharing.

Here's how the cake looked at the LTH picnic.


Grape Cake by Josephine2004, on Flickr


Inside the Grape Cake by Josephine2004, on Flickr

Thanks for all who tried it and gave comments. I think the consensus was that it was interesting, in that the cake and filling were not too sweet, in fact, not as sweet as expected. The frosting, on the other hand, was of the seven-minute variety - very sweet. I thought the frosting had a marshmallowy quality and a subtle grape taste. The color was interesting, too - more grey than lavender. I might up the lavender with some natural food coloring next time.

I also think that the cake would make a good retro dessert by itself, unfrosted, with a filling of peanut butter and grape jelly. Though perhaps you might want to mix the PB (creamy only) with marshmallow fluff for lightness. In that cake some of us might taste the default lunches of our 1960's childhoods. Come to think of it, maybe there is a way to incorporate the potato chips and apple quarter with that.