Gingerbread Cake...but where's the pineapple?

Seeing as we are on a bit of a roll with the 'bread cakes' as I call them, we chose Gingerbread Cake as our next challenge. It seemed pretty straightforward as far as ingredients go, although it did call for cloves which I left out. Don't care for them much. Here's the recipe in case anyone wants to try it:

3 tbsp shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup corn syrup
1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup boiling water

Cream shortening and sugar, add beaten egg, then syrup. Mix and sift dry ingredients, then mix them into batter thoroughly. Add boiling water last.

We had gotten to this point in the instructions and were going along quite nicely when we got to the last line on the card, which read, "Pour batter over Pineapple mixture and bake..." Wait a minute. Pineapple mixture? What pineapple mixture? Who ever heard of pineapples in a gingerbread cake? I read back over the ingredients just to make sure I hadn't lost my mind. No, no pineapples were mentioned. Hmmm. After a very, very short period of debate we decided to skip that line; pretend it wasn't there and forge ahead. There were two reasons for this: first, I had no pineapples in the house, and second, I wouldn't have a clue how to make the 'pineapple mixture'. So instead, we pretended that the last line of the recipe went like this:
"Pour batter into baking pan and bake 30-35 minutes in moderate oven (425-450)."

I don't know if you've noticed, but Grandma Bess (as I've decided to call her) is pretty generous in her definition of 'a moderate oven'. For pumpkin pie and banana cake, a moderate oven is defined as 375. One recipe says moderate is 400. Here it is 425-450, which seems 'more than moderate' to me. I had visions of turning out a black lump of a cake if I baked it at 450 for 35 minutes! Maybe if a pineapple mixture was involved this would work, but without it I didn't dare try. So I set the oven at 400 and baked it for just over 25 minutes, and it was perfect. We don't miss the pineapple at all. If you ask me, all this cake needs is a generous helping of whipped cream on top. We may have to buy some tomorrow and give it a try.

Tomato....cake?

Wow! I can't believe it has been over a month since my last post. Time flew through the holidays, and we are just now getting back into the swing of things regarding our cooking project. Still putting off the pie crusts....

Because of the great success we had with the banana cake, I searched for a recipe in the same 'family'. And I found it, but it was with some trepidation that I announced to my kids that our next project would be something called 'tomato cake'. Faces were made all around, but I reminded everyone (myself included) that our European friends react the same way when we mention pumpkin pie. To them, putting pumpkin in a pie is inconceivable. So we set aside our prejudices about the proper use of tomatoes and forged ahead.

Since starting this project, I have come to expect and even to look forward to the fact that some sleuthing will be required to figure out the recipes, and tomato cake was no exception. The recipe as it appears on the card is as follows:

Tomato Cake

2 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
Sift together
1 egg
1 cup sugar
1 cup raisins
1 cup tomato soup
1-2 cup butter

And that is it. No instructions of any kind except for 'sift together'. No mention of oven temperature. Nothing. But I'm learning! With my kids' help, we sifted all of the dry ingredients into a bowl which we then set aside. (and by the way, 1 teaspoon of nutmeg doesn't seem like much, but wow the aroma! We almost had to put the bowl in another room till baking it was so strong.) We then creamed the butter and sugar together (impressive, I know) then added the egg and the soup, and finally, the raisins. One word about the tomato soup. I made a mistake here, which I will remedy the next time this recipe is used. I bought Campbells Tomato Soup. Two problems with that: one, it contains high fructose corn syrup, which I believe to be one of the evils of the world and two, the soup is condensed, which I did not factor in. This, as I figured out later, was what accounted for the batter being much thicker than your standard cake batter - it was more the consistency of brownie batter. Because of that I baked it in a square glass pan for about 24 minutes at 350 degrees. (Or in a 'moderate' oven!) It turned out all right. Actually, it was delicious and reminded us a bit of pumpkin bread (!). But I think the consistency is wrong, due to the use of condensed soup.

I encourage you to try it yourself and let me know what you think! This recipe was the nicest surprise so far, as I have never encountered anything like it. Has anyone else made tomato soup? I'd love to know.

Happy New Year to all, and happy baking!