JoAnn Bradham's Victory Coffee Cake

I was cleaning and clearing out in the kitchen on the first day of Spring.

I had to climb a ladder to reach the top shelf where I found an old cookbook. It was my Mother’s.

It is huge and called THE VICTORY COOKBOOK, WARTIME EDITION, first published in 1938, (Mama’s copy shows a recent copyright of 1942) and it is “respectfully dedicated with affection and gratitude” to General Douglas MacArthur.

A full page painting of the General appears opposite the dedication.

I stopped cleaning and just enjoyed it for a while; the recipes, the pictures, the advice on table setting, how to cook for two and so much more.

And, because I had the ingredients on hand, I decided to make a coffee cake from the recipe found on Page 460.

VICTORY COFFEE CAKE

2 tablespoons shortening.

1/2 cup sugar.

1 egg.

1/2 teaspoon vanilla.

3/4 cup flour.

2 teaspoons baking powder.

1/4 cup milk.

Cream shortening and sugar, add beaten egg yoke and the sifted dries ingredients alternately with the milk. Add vanilla. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg white. Spread one half of the mixture in a deep greased piepan.

FILLING

1/2 cup brown sugar.

2 teaspoons cinnamon.

2 tablespoons melted fat.

1 cup chopped walnuts.

2 tablespoons flour.

Mix all the ingredients thoroughly and spread one half over the batter in the pan. Add the rest of the cake batter and spread the remainder of the filling over the top.

Bake in a moderate oven (350-375 degrees). Bake 45- to 60-minutes.

I guess I’ll keep the cookbook out as I marked a few more recipes I want to try – from the past.

JoAnn Bradham

Clarksdale, Miss.

March 31, 2021

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