Grandma's Depression Cake

The only thing that troubled me more than the pain in my back that morning as I climbed out of the guest bed at my sister’s house was my worries about money, the same worries that I fell asleep thinking about.

I’d been excited to visit Therese and see my nieces and nephews, but all I could think about was how I’d hurt my back and had to cut down on my hours at work. Even with my savings, I wasn’t sure I’d have enough to cover the bills. Slowly I pulled on my robe and limped to the kitchen.

“Are you okay?” Therese asked, handing me a steaming cup of tea.

“Yeah,” I said. “Just wish I could stop worrying about my finances.”

Therese put her hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t we make Grandma’s cake,” she said. “It’ll cheer you up.”

“We’ll help!” my nephews Patrick and Daniel chimed in.

After breakfast, I got the ingredients out of the pantry. Patrick and Daniel grabbed bowls from the cupboard. “My mom used to make this cake for all of us,” I said as I mixed the sugar and oil.

“Even though there wasn’t a lot of money,” Patrick added, having heard the story many times.

“That’s right. Especially then.” Daniel stirred in the raisins and Patrick added the spices. Then we stirred in the flour. I poured the batter into a pan. The boys watched while I slid the pan into the oven. “It’ll be ready in an hour,” I told them. They ran off to play.

I sat in the kitchen with Therese, sipping my tea. “Nothing ever stole Mom’s joy,” I said.

It wasn’t easy being a single mom, raising eight of us kids on a very tight budget, but that couldn’t bring her down. “She’d always say, ‘When you don’t have anything, you make do and the Lord will provide the rest,’” Therese said.

Mom got that spirit from her mother, Grandma Ethel, who never let the hardships of the Depression discourage her.

Mom was also a master at making food stretch. And she always found a way to include a special treat on birthdays or Christmas—a tasty cake with no eggs, milk or butter that Grandma taught her to bake. Eggless, Milkless, Butterless Cake, she called it.

“Remember how we’d all run around the living room chanting, ‘eggless, milkless, butterless cake’ once we caught a whiff of it coming from the kitchen?” Therese asked, laughing.

“Those were good times,” I said. We didn’t have money, but we sure knew how to have fun together. Just thinking about the eight of us gathered around the Formica table in the kitchen waiting for Mom to cut the cake made my worries fade.