welcome friends welcome back to Sunday morning in the old cook book show today
we're going to do another recipe out of my favorite recipe published by the
Stayner Sun around 1938 and we're going to do something called a gumdrop cake Recipe
now this is something that I've had requests for over and over and over and
it's kind of funny because the requests don't always come from the same cookbook
this gumdrop cake is something that you'll find in pretty much every
cookbook from this time period but they're all different this cookbook has
four different versions of a gumdrop cake in it and as I look through all of
our other Canadian cookbooks from around this time period post-world War one
pre-world War two there's probably almost a dozen different versions of a
gumdrop cake and pretty much all they have in common is gumdrops and these are
a special kind of gumdrop they are a baking gum and they are really really
hard if you were to just put these in your mouth they wouldn't be very
pleasant to chew on but when you put them in the cake they get really nice
and soft and they taste great so the first thing we're going to do is cream
this butter once the butter is whipped up and nice and soft cream in the sugar
until light and fluffy now we cream in the eggs one at a time and creaming the
eggs in one at a time just makes it easier to get them mixed in properly you
could dump them in both at the same time but you're just going to end up mixing
longer to achieve the same result
and now the second egg and what we've done so far is pretty much standard
between all of the variations of this recipe this is where we start to get a
little bit different this recipe calls for applesauce now about a third of the
recipes that we found called for apples applesauce the one that Julie makes that
was her grandmother's recipe was crushed pineapple which is a really nice flavor
in this cake makes it feel really kind of decadent and I guess for the 1930s
would be something very interesting this recipe also calls for raisins now not
all of the recipes called for raisins
the one that Julie makes doesn't have raisins in it and these raisins I've put
into a pot cover them with water and boiled them for five minutes drain them
and let them cool before I put them in here so these are these are already sort
of reconstituted or rehydrated so I'm just going to mix these in it also says
at this point to put in one cup of the three cups of flour so I'm just going to
mix this up a little bit get the applesauce distributed and then I'll put
the flour in first though I'm gonna put a little bit of flour on top of the
gumdrops I'm doing that because everybody says you're supposed to I'm
not convinced it does anything but I'll do it anyway because it doesn't hurt so
but a cup of flour and I'm going to put the baking powder and the salt in the
rest of this flour and we'll just give that a bit of a mix get everything going
all at once why not let's make a mess okay we're gonna mix this in okay now a
little bit more flour and keep mixing
I've got all the flour mixed in now it's time for the gumdrops looking good now
I've prepped a baking pan with a bit of parchment paper a sling so that it's
easy to pull the cake out and we're just gonna put this in now it says to bake in
an oven around 250 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit for 2 and a half hours so a
very low and slow cake baking of course it didn't tell me what size of a pan and
now that I've got this in here I realize my pan is too big so I'm gonna swap it
out for something smaller 9x9 much better than 9 by 13 so this is going to
go into a very low and slow oven for about two to two-and-a-half hours
so Glenn I see you've made some jujube cake but this one has raisins it's just
very different than the one I'm used to so it's yeah so it's it's a it's a
different recipe there are so many different jujube or gumdrop cake
Anniston and recipes in these books it was hard to decide which one but this is
completely different than the one that your mom makes her that you make every
year yes yes cuz I have cherries not raisins yeah I don't know what else is
different um pineapple you put pineapple in yours
yes these are the rest this is the package recipes that hangs on our fridge
these are the ones we make all the time and usually and they have a friend's
name attached to them because they've been gifts of some sort so yeah so dark
cherries cherries not raisins and then pineapple what's in this one that if not
what does it have applesauce okay so that makes sense right because the
recipe I have would be a more modern version and perhaps where this is 19
yeah 1930s Kent pineapple in the 1930s probably wasn't enough talking yeah hmm
one fun like this cake yeah - nothing like the one my mom makes nothing like
the one your mom makes so I think the difference is the flavor of the raisins
instead of the cherries mm-hm and the one that you that your mom
makes or that you make mmm the pineapple would give more of an acidic Tang than
the apple sauce does but still Wow I love jujubes I know aren't they great
my teeth mm-hmm now some of the recipes
good jujubes are very chewy excuse us as we chew gum drops not oh
sorry yes gum drops gun drops said that twice gum drops drops not quite the same
I think jujubes would completely disintegrate yeah they wouldn't the same
which brings me to a second point in all of these recipes there are several of
them that say don't use black gum drops and I think that's because as they melt
the color would bleed out and it would give you a cake that's sort of you could
get a really great great great happy yes not taste great another thing that I
noticed is a lot of these recipes tell you to wrap it and don't cut it for
seven days some of them are two weeks to treat it just like you would a Christmas
cake so again this is a Christmas time Christmas cake this is a is a cake that
you roll out at Christmas and some of my cousins who hate Christmas cake yeah
love this so as a child I found Christmas cake to be overwhelmingly rich
yeah a lot of things mince meat I still find mince meat to be overwhelming
Christmas cake cuz there's some cake involved I've managed to you know yeah
I'm okay with it but so this was the substitute that my family made for me
yeah and it's fun and it is fun it's tennis tasty so this is this is worth a
try any of the gumdrop cake recipes and you can see just the guy idea of a
gumdrop me so much joy it's so much joy any of the recipes would be would be
good I think they'd all have a similar flavor
and it's of course it's something with the ingredients that you could play with
you know you could put some peel in that if you wanted if you didn't want to put
the raisins in you can put in some peel now you're almost making it like not
gummed up cake I know there's a risk of too much other stuff other than gumdrops
gumdrops okay gumdrops thanks for stopping by see you
again soon
you