Pioneer
Tomato Soup Cake
The wartime mystery cake
IODE Fort Monckton Cook Book, Moncton NB, 1941It sounds impossible — a spiced layer cake made with condensed tomato soup — but this Depression-and-wartime curiosity from the 1941 IODE cookbook is moist, warmly spiced, and tastes not at all like tomatoes. A New Brunswick mystery worth trying.
Source: IODE Fort Monckton Cook Book, Moncton NB, 1941
Ingredients
- 1 can (10¾ oz) condensed tomato soup, undiluted
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ½ cup butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1¾ cups flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp cloves
- ½ tsp nutmeg
- ½ cup raisins or chopped walnuts (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease and flour a 9-inch round cake pan (or two 8-inch layers).
- Stir baking soda into the tomato soup — it will foam up considerably. Set aside.
- Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time.
- Sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.
- Alternately fold in the dry ingredients and the tomato soup mixture, beginning and ending with flour.
- Fold in raisins or nuts if using.
- Pour into prepared pan(s). Bake 30–35 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Cool completely. Frost with cream cheese icing or dust with icing sugar.
✦ Kitchen Notes
- From the IODE Fort Monckton Cook Book, Moncton NB, 1941.
- Cream cheese frosting became the classic pairing in later decades — the tang balances the warm spices perfectly. The IODE ladies would approve.