War Baby (45 page)

1 teaspoon of mixed spice

1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

4 fresh eggs (from the local farm) or equivalent in dried egg

1 lb of mixed dried fruit (most of which Mary and Ruby had dried themselves – soft fruits, plums, dried apples)

1 teaspoon of lemon substitute or essence

Milk to mix

Cream sugar with the margarine then add the honey and the eggs. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt and spices together. Add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture finally adding the rest of the ingredients. Line a 7 inch tin with greased paper – margarine wrappers will do – and bake in a moderate oven for two hours.

Mock Marzipan Paste

4 tablespoons mashed potato

1 tablespoon of egg white

1 tablespoon of sugar

A few drops of almond essence

Mix all ingredients well together to a fairly stiff consistency. Spread top of cake with a little honey, blackberry jelly or jam. Press mock marzipan mixture on to cake and press into shape. Pinch edges and score with fork. Put back into the oven to brown. While still hot, sprinkle with grated chocolate if you have it or ice the cake if you happen to find any icing sugar in the shops.

Mary was given what must have been the very last packet of icing sugar left in the village shop so could decorate this (very small) cake with icing. Otherwise she would have had to resort to mixing dried milk (termed household milk at the time), water and sugar, perhaps with a little artificial colouring included. Luckily they had a lot of bread pudding to fill everyone up with! Nothing was wasted in the wartime kitchen.

 

 

12 oz self-raising flour or plain with baking powder (Remember the Sweets were bakers so had access to flour, though used it frugally)

Pinch of salt

3 oz cooking fat or bacon fat (or any other fat they were lucky enough to have saved from other meals)

Water

Tin of pilchards – 16 oz if possible

Chopped onions

Salt and pepper

Sift flour, salt, rub in cooking fat. Bind with water. Open tin of pilchards. Drain off excess fluid. Keep to one side. It can be used for other things, e.g. mixing with herbs and onion and spreading it on bread, or for the basis of a soup.

Mash pilchards with chopped onions, season to taste.

Using a teacup rim, make roundels, fill each one with the fish mixture, brush edges with milk and fold in half moon shapes. Small pasties but ideal for a wedding buffet.

 

 

2 tablespoons of margarine

4 tablespoons of sugar

Vanilla essence

8 tablespoons of grated raw carrot

12 tablespoons of self-raising flour

Cream fat and sugar together, beat in flavouring and carrot. Fold in flour. Drop spoonfuls into a greased tart tray. Sprinkle the tops with sugar and bake in oven for about eighteen to twenty minutes.

 

 

12 oz self-raising flour or plain flour with 3 teaspoons of baking powder

Pinch of salt

3 oz cooking fat or bacon fat

Water

4 oz fat bacon rashers

2 cooked leeks cut into rings or finely chopped whichever you prefer. Mary left them in rings

8 oz diced cooked potatoes

2 tablespoons of chopped chives

Sift the flour and salt, rub in the fat. Bind with water. Grill and chop the bacon rashers, cool then mix with the leeks, potatoes and chives. Roll out the pastry into an oblong shape. Place the mixture down the middle. Starting at one end, roll over and over until you have something that resembles a Swiss roll.

THE Official Recipe

Issued by the Ministry of Food, April 1942

Wholemeal flour

Potato Flour

Salt Sea Fine

Tap Water

Vitamin C

Yeast active dry

The Ministry of Food insisted on the above mentioned ingredients. It was up to the baker to use the best method as he saw fit.

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Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,

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Copyright © Lizzie Lane 2015

Lizzie Lane has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

First published by Ebury Press in 2015

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780091956608