Simple cake recipe has a Great Depression connection
Grandpa and Grandma Potempa arrived from Poland, married and moved their family to our Indiana farm during the uncertainty of the late 1920s.
My father Chester, the youngest of my grandparents’ nine children, was born in 1929 on the family farm just prior to the start of the Great Depression.
Knowing how to manage a large family with a frugal household was key for the day-to-day life of my grandparents and my dad and his siblings as detailed in previous columns and cookbooks.
I’ve featured many old-fashioned recipes throughout the years which have originated from sparse ingredient eras of wartime, rationing and the Great Depression.
My original From the Farm cookbook published in 2004 includes a recipe for my Auntie Lilly’s “Mock Apple Pie,” which substitutes crackers in place of apples for when the farm cellar is empty by the end of a long winter. Also included in this same cookbook volume is Uncle Swede’s Dandelion Wine, made in stone crocks from the early blossoms of dandelions, when fruit is unavailable to ferment bottled libations.
My second published cookbook, “More From the Farm” released in 2007, included a recipe from our wonderful family friend Irene Jakubowski for her “city chicken,” which is made of pieces of pork cooked on wooden skewers to recreate a chicken drumstick and would satisfy cravings during wartime when poultry was scarce.
I also showcased an old-fashioned sugar cream pie recipe in my third cookbook “Further From the Farm” in 2010. The recipe came courtesy of my oldest brother Tom’s wife Linda, who has carefully preserved the family recipe from her own grandmother. More than 70 years old, this recipe was provided by Linda’s aunt, Phyllis Swinehart of Crown Point, who just celebrated her 90th birthday this month.
Most are aware that the red Cardinal is our state’s bird in Indiana and the Tulip Tree is the Hoosier state’s tree.
In 2009, a resolution was passed in Indianapolis to name Sugar
Cream Pie as Indiana’s state pie, much to my own mother Peggy’s dislike, since this pie is very similar to a baked custard pie, the latter which is also not her favorite. As for why the sugar cream pie was designated as Indiana’s signature state baked good? The link is a nod to the state’s Amish population which prizes this pie variety.
In recent months, social media sites have been buzzing about sharing recipes for “Sprite Pie,” an agesold recipe which has suddenly been resurrected during the national COVID-19 pandemic of the last year, since certain baking ingredients have been in short supply.
The recipe, usually using a readymade crust, uses only Sprite soda, sugar, butter and flour — baked until firm. Dating back to the Great Depression, the recipe’s origin originally used a plain carbonated water such as club soda, and was called “Water Pie.”
My longtime (former) newsroom desk neighbor Lauri Harvey Keagle of Crown Point wrote to me last week during the “cabin fever” days of the recent snowstorm with her own favorite Depression era recipe for a simple cake.
“I know you’ll appreciate this Phil,” Lauri wrote me.
“The weather has been too nasty for grocery shopping, and I wanted to make a treat for the family, Kurt and Jack, the latter who is now 14! I was looking through recipes for what I could make with the ingredients I had in our house.
I made a Depression Chocolate Cake, which doesn’t need eggs, and it turned out nicely. I’ve included the recipe and a photo of a slice of the cake on one of my own grandmother’s Candlewick glassware plates, which also dates back to the 1930s.”