July 24, 2021

HERITAGE RECIPE: Maple Nut Cake


This is a rather simple recipe today, but don't let the lack of ingredients fool you--I was very pleasantly surprised at how good this turned out!

I chose this recipe because we just got home from vacation yesterday and we had zero groceries in the house. I hadn't gone grocery shopping or even chosen a recipe to make for today's post, so I flipped through the heritage recipe book looking for something that was very simple.

I had all of the ingredients for this Maple Nut Cake, so I decided to give it a try--and it was delicious! It has the flavor of chocolate chip cookies (without chocolate chips) but the texture of a quick bread. (I'm assuming the "maple" in the name comes from the brown sugar; there is no maple syrup or extract.)

Jerry called this "Cookie Bread" because it tastes like cookies but it's in quick bread form.

This recipe was submitted to the Rockwood, Michigan Area Historical Society via a handwritten recipe book by Viola Herzog. However, she copied the recipe from a 1930's issue of the Detroit News.

As always, I am typing this exactly as written in the heritage book. Make sure you read my notes afterward, because there is an important error in this recipe. I made this recipe exactly as written, with no substitutions or alterations. The printer-friendly recipe is rewritten by me with any clarifications.

Here is a printer-friendly version!


Maple Nut Cake

1/2 c. shortening
1 c. brown sugar
3/4 c. milk
1-1/2 c. flour
1 c. finely chopped nutmeats
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. salt

Cream shortening with sugar; add egg yolks. Mix well. Add milk and flour sifted with baking powder; stir well. Then fold in the stiffly beaten whites of eggs and vanilla. Bake in a greased loaf pan 1 hour.

My Notes:

First, the obvious error (which I didn't notice until I was mixing the batter). The directions never mention adding the salt or nuts, even though they are in the ingredients. I'm not sure if this error was made in the Detroit News, or the handwritten recipe, or the heritage book. I added the salt with the flour and baking powder, and I stirred in the nuts last.

I wish I'd read ahead to beat the egg whites--if I was doing this again, I would beat the egg whites first, set them in the fridge while I mixed the rest, and then add the whites in. This way, I wouldn't have to transfer the batter to another bowl, wash the mixing bowl, beat the egg whites, then add the egg whites to the batter. Egg whites won't get stiff if any of the yolk is mixed in there, so you need a very clean bowl to beat them (ask me how I know!).

To get specific with the ingredients, I used whole milk and pecans (since it didn't specify in the recipe, I just used my preferences).

I finally got some new bakeware, and I'm excited about using it! Since I've been making a lot of the heritage recipes, I got some metal baking sheets/pans to use instead of the Pyrex glass ones. (Temperature resistant glass wasn't introduced until 1915, and a lot of these recipes are from the late 1800's to early 1900's.) I think the bake times should be more accurate with metal pans. Anyway, I greased my new loaf pan and baked the "cake" for 1 hour, as stated. (I put cake in quotes because this reminds me more of a quick bread.)

It was done after exactly one hour in the oven. Delicious!


3 comments:

  1. Welcome home! Glad you were able to get away. The recipe looks fabulous -- I'll bet it would be even better with the addition of some chocolate chips. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. this sounds yummy! I think I might make it with chocolate chips since you say it tastes like cookies.

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  3. Oooh. I want to try this and use chocolate chips instead of nuts because we have a nut allergy in our house! I'll let you know how it goes when I make it! Thanks for the recipe!s

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