[Janiebakes]

I needed to make a birthday cake and decided to use my grandmother's recipe for "Piskota" an everyday little cake made by every cook in Hungary. Years ago Kid Pizza told me it was not a balanced recipe and he was right. More often than not it did not turn out well but I kept using it anyway because of tradition. The recipe is one egg, one tablespoon of sugar and one of flour for every egg. Seperate eggs, beat the yolks with the sugar, fold in the flour and lastly, fold in the whipped egg whites. Bake at 350. Even if it fell, you just sliced it, layered strawberry slices in the middle and covered it with whipped cream and it was not too bad at all. This year I did some research and found a much better recipe. I have been emailing my aunt who still lives in Hungary and she gave me her recipe. It uses a little baking powder and it also uses a technique I have not seem before. After you seperate the eggs, you add water as well as sugar to the yolks as well as to the whites. They are whipped seperately. Mix the baking soda with flour and sift half of that over the egg yolk, water and sugar mixture. Fold in half of the whipped egg whites, water and sugar. Take the last half of flour/baking soda and fold it into to whipped eggwhites/water/sugar, then add all that to the eggyolk/flour mix. It is easier than it sounds. I do wonder if I translated it correctly because I got some wet lumps of flour when I folded the flour into the eggwhites. Baked it at 350 for about 30 minutes and it was a success. Tall, airy and golden with moderate sized holes in the crumb.

[Janiebakes]

Hi Kimbob, good to see you again too. You were on the Bakingcircle as long as I can remember. Cwcdesign, I remember you too. Nice to be back in touch.

I agree about the KAF Cookie Companion being decadent and not getting much use these days. I am more on the lookout for recipes that use less sugar and butter as well. I also find that I like making my old favorite cookie recipes much more than looking for new ones.

[Janiebakes]

Thank you for the warm welcome. I am not in touch with other members of the old baking circle. This blog was a comfort to me many times when I was missing the old board.
I think we got through about a dozen of the recipes before losing interest. I think we were going through the KAF Cookie Companion. Can't really eat like that anymore. I was in my 40s and 50s with two teenage boys in the house. We are now empty nesters and retired as well. Can't even ship the cookies off to work. That is much of the lure of the ration baking to me. A more sparse but still tasty baked good.

[Janiebakes]

Thank you for the info on Glen and Friends as well as Emmy Made in Japan. There are a few hours of watching there! I watched Glen bake a cake and explain about the rarity of vanilla in the late 1880s recipes. Interesting stuff. I had never considered prison food. Could be a depressing topic too. It can be sad to consider what our relatives went through. The first half of the last century was pretty awful.

[Janiebakes]

I stumbled across a blog by a woman who was researching and updating recipes used during WWII rationing. She had read that people were much healthier during that time because of more wholesome eating. The pandemic messed with the supply chain here in Cleveland and it seemed like a good idea to see what substitutions and such would work depending on what was available in the grocery stores. Like so many, we had a hard time getting flour and yeast. The rationing recipe I started with was called Oaty Biscuits. I had a Costco sized box of rolled oats in the pantry so it seemed a logical choice. It used rolled oats but it also called for wheat flour. I subbed oat flour that I made from rolled oats in my food processor. Here is the recipe:

4 oz (115 g) margarine or butter.
3 oz (85 g) of sugar
7 oz (200 g) of rolled oats
5 oz (150 g) self-raising flour or plain flour sifted with 1 teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt
1 reconstitued dried egg or fresh egg
A little milk

* Pre-heat the oven to 180C (350F) or Gas Mark 4.

* Grease two baking trays well or use parchment/baking paper instead.

* Cream the margarine/butter with the sugar until soft and light.

* Add the rolled oats and mix.

* Sift the flour, baking powder and salt and add the egg (if used) into the * mixture and mix well again before adding in a little milk to moisten. The dough should be stiff and quite dry but sticks together. Knead together. Use a cookie scoop to portion out 36 lumps of dough, roll into a ball, place on parchment and flatten with a fork or cup bottom. Bake for about 15 minutes, let cool on baking sheet for 10 minutes.

Subbing oatflour for the wheat flour worked great. I have also used brown sugar instead of white and that worked too. Next I want to try using molasses. These cookies are a little dry and go great with tea or coffee.

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