I have a lot of cookbooks. I started buying old cookbooks when I was a young wife who couldn’t afford new ones. At that time, it seemed like nobody but me wanted the old books, and they were only a dollar or two at used book shops. I read them like novels, and I especially like the ones with notes written in them telling you that this recipe is excellent and that this other one is awful. Sometimes the old books will have pressed flowers or a curl of baby hair saved within its pages. This week I have been reading some of the old books and thought that this particular book sounded promising:
This is a Fourth Edition from 1953. My husband likes moist cakes, like applesauce cake, carrot cake, or a delicious fudgey cake. This recipe sounded good, so I decided to try it:
Those are pretty good instructions for an older, privately printed cookbook. I mixed the dry ingredients except for the sugar, creamed the sugar with the shortening (I was using Smart Balance margarine) in the food processor and set that aside. I removed about 1/4 cup of the dry ingredients and added that to the now empty food processor, then put in the dates and nuts and chopped them up. The shortening and sugar mixture was added to the dry ingredients with the milk and vanilla, and mixed as in the recipe. Then I added the eggs and the rest and mixed that in. I baked it in a bundt pan at around 350 degrees and kept an eye on it. It baked for about 40 – 45 minutes.
Since I am allergic to citrus rind, I made the frosting a little differently. I just put some powdered sugar into a small bowl and juiced a small orange into it. I mixed it, adding a pinch of salt and a little vanilla, adjusting the thickness by adding more sugar until it had the thickness of a glaze. After I got the cake out of the pan (still warm), I spread this over the cake.
A very good cake.
