To make this rough time’s recipe, the same way Grandma Willi does, you will need two cups of raisins, one cup of brown sugar and 1/3 cup of margarine, one tsp of cinnamon, about and 1/8 of a tsp of nutmeg, about an 1/8 of a tsp of allspice, 2 cups of flour, ¼ tsp of salt, 2 round tbsp of baking powder.
Today, we’re going to make rough time’s cake, haven’t made it forever. This is sometimes called Depression Cake. And it’s simple, easy, and nice and sweet, and cost pennies to make literally pennies. Couple of cups of raisins, cup and ½, 2 cups, if you only have one just one, it’s alright, about a cup of brown sugar. Two cups of water, yah, that’s good enough. We’re going to cook this for about ten minutes, until the raisins are swollen in ten10-15 minutes. Until the raisins are swollen, and the sugar is all melted in, it’s a little bit slurpy. Then we turn it of and let it cool.
So we’re calling for about 1/3 cup of margarine, roughly speaking, see the size of my hand, about that big. And we’re putting in lava along with the margarine, both things are required if you’re going to get this thing to taste good. They say you mustn’t cook in a bad mood, because you could poison people.
Now, this is going to melt on the stove, and we’re going to take this to the stove now, and cook it up real good. About a spoonful of cinnamon, tsp, and just a little bit of nutmeg, nutmeg is too strong to use very much, that’s enough.
This is allspice. Just a little of that too, there we go. It looks yucky now, but it’s going to be beautiful later. I’m going to use a bigger pot Willi. That will cook in a minute. Yup, see they’re not swelled up yet.
What economic crisis. That’s getting nice and plump. I gave a cookbook to a woman, 82 years old the other day. She called me back, she said you know a lot of those recipes in there my mother used. Imagine, 100 hundred years. The raisins are nice and plump. You can feel that there’s liquid in it, they’re soft. We’re going to turn it off now and let it cool. When it's cool we’ll add it to the flour mix.
I'm going to start with 2 cups of flour. I got very lucky and the organic was only a few cents more than the bulk store than the regular flour, so we opted for that. Better for us all not to have pesticides, and certainly we got to be supporting organic agriculture. There we go, 2 cups of flour.
Now, we’ll have a little bit of salt, shall we skip the spoon? About a quarter tsp, perhaps that much, there we go. Baking powder, now I'm a little excessive with baking powder, because I want to make sure this thing is rising. Some people put two good size in it for sure it's going to rise. And we’re not going to put any eggs in this cake to help that process along. So there you go.
Now that’s it for the ingredients, believe it or not, because we’re going to use this mixture here, it already contains brown sugar and raisins, so it's very sweet with a little bit of spice.
We’ll boil that and now, as you see, look at those raisins, how nice and plump they are, how nice and fat. Now, we know it's ready and it's cool. We’ll mix those two together, here we go. Put every drop, don’t waste it. Here we go, okay, now, lets see how much liquid that will take. Now, this is a cake, so we’re going to stir it extra. Cake is stirred longer than it quickly. Get it really nice and smooth. Scrape the sides down as you go. Get all that flour stick in there.
Now, this is a little bit thick, that is not a cake butter yet, I'm going to add a little bit of water, just a bit. Let me try that. It shouldn’t pull too hard. It should be too hard to stir if it got the right consistency. Not bad, just a little bit more, so it will not be too stiff. There we go. Now, it doesn’t fight me anymore, I know it's ready. You can see it's nice, it's brown. You can smell the spices already coming through, beautiful. I've set my oven already to 350 degrees. I'm going to bake it on one of those oblong pans, 13 x 9. So this won't take so long to bake, 30 minutes, maybe 40 at the most.
Okay, that’s cake been baked about 35 minutes, but it smells just right. Oh it looks good too! Beautiful Rough Times Cake, put that down. Now, I got a little trick for you ordinary old corn syrup. Okay, fairly pure form of sugar. What I'm going to do is give a little glaze, not a lot icing, what it will do is make a really nice texture and a little beautiful taste on top. And the cake will actually last better and longer. At the back of the spoon, and just spread the thinnest little coat. Cover the whole thing, take your time, no hurry, food takes time. That will sink right into the first layer of the cake. Not as sweet as honey, not as sweet as sugar. Now, that cake, let it cook just a little bit, it's ready to serve, just like that, right out of the pan, no need to transfer, of course you can if you want to. But it is just served just like that, Rough Times Cake.
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