No Sugar, No Flour, No Butter, No Eggs

It is wonderful to think about bravely surviving dark days and coming through it all stronger than you were before. But after all, when you get right down to it, what did the people of the Great Depression actually eat?

When you don’t have any sugar, you’re out of butter, only a few small eggs are around and a little flour, what do you make? I am sure we have all faced times when our refrigerators looked a little empty and bleak. During those times, it is a great idea to turn to Great Depression recipes as these recipes have survived for a reason. They tasted good even with only a few ingredients on hand!

When you don’t have many ingredients, creativity, ingenuity, resourcefulness and cleverness are needed in the kitchen. The Great Depression saw a rise in “mock” foods. Foods that looked or tasted like another, usually more expensive ingredient, like using Ritz crackers to make an apple pie or other root vegetables instead of potatoes. People ate meatless meals, soups and lots of vegetables in season. Simple ingredients and recipes were all the rage and substituting one ingredient for another was very common. Cracker crumbs for pie crusts and oil or shortening in place of butter were two common baking substitutes.

I came across this recipe for this eggless, milkless and butterless cake in the wonderful book called We Had Everything But Money. I recommend you get a copy if you are interested in reading first-hand accounts from people that lived through the Great Depression! The only change I made to the recipe was to leave out the raisins as we are not fans of them here. 🙂 Using dried cranberries might be better. Also, the recipe says to use lard or shortening, but I found that you can use any other type of fat that you have on hand like regular butter, vegan butter or even coconut oil.