One of my favorite recipes for the holiday season is Hot Water Ginger Bread, which I have dubbed: ‘no ingredients left in the house ginger bread.’ I found it in a reprint of Fanny Farmer, and I have now amassed a large collection of cooking pamphlets from the turn of the last century through the depression and war years. The recipes that offer innovative ways to compensate or just plane ignore the lack of an ingredient are especially interesting to me.

So it was that I was looking through some of my cooking pamphlet collection for a cake recipe that either was or could easily be made vegan with very little change. I found Depression Cake. The only non-vegan ingredient included in the original recipe was butter and I figured I could easily substitute vegetable shortening. The batter was not thin as the recipe warned so I added ½ cup of applesauce. The denser cake took one full hour in the oven when divided into two loaf pans.

The result was decidedly good, though not very sweet. It would be easy to make this into a mock fruit cake by increasing the sugar, soaking the fruits in rum, and then drizzling the cake afterward. I will have to try this next.