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Reader Marg Smart, feeling nostalgic for a cake from the days just after World War II, wrote in for help in finding a British recipe for something she called the Allies Celebration Cake.

Searching on the Internet yielded many, many celebration cakes, because the British, like the Americans, tend to mark all important occasions with cakes. As Marg no doubt discovered, no one seems to have posted a cake recipe specifically meant for celebrating the defeat of the Axis in 1945, although there were several mentions of cakes — without recipes — created to celebrate the end of the hostilities. The search for Allies Celebration Cake, though, was ultimately futile.

However, a search for Victory Cake led to many recipes. Most were American, but I did find a British one. It was, indeed, a spice cake, and it did mention the fact that many foods were rationed in England. In the United States, most rationing, except for sugar, ended when the war was over, while in England many foods continued to be in short supply for some time.

Unfortunately, the recipe was not written in the form to which we are accustomed today (or in the format of this Web site) and did not list the amounts of the spices it required. Since tastes change over time, I consulted similar spice-cake recipes of the late '30s and early '40s to make the recipe as accurate as possible. The recipe is given exactly as found — with my additions in brackets.

It seems to have been a very lean cake that depended on plumped raisins for moistness. Interestingly, all of the American victory cakes were chocolate cakes. I suppose that chocolate was not in short supply in the United States after the war. This English recipe, however, contained only enough cocoa to provide color and a slightly rounder flavor.

Victory Cake
This is my Uncle Vic Abbott's recipe, it has no eggs or milk and only uses a small amount of butter. Apparently it was used during the war to save on rationed food.

Shopping List: allspice, baking powder, baking soda, butter or margarine, cinnamon, cloves, cocoa, cold water, flour, seeded raisons [sic], salt, sugar

Ingredients
Fruit
2 cups of seeded raisins

Dry Ingredients
3 cups flour, 1 tsp. baking soda, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt [ground spices: 1/2 tsp. allspice, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 tsp. cloves]

Liquid Ingredients
2 cups of cold water

Other
3 tbs. butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 tbs. cocoa

Instructions
Prepare a 10" tube pan, as described above.
[No description was provided, but probably called for the pan to be buttered and dusted with flour]

Boil together for 5 mins.: butter, seeded raisons [sic], sugar, cold water. Let cool.

Sift together flour and all other [dry] ingredients [including the cocoa.]

Mix the boiled ingredients and the flour mixture together until blended.

Baking
Place the batter in the tube pan.

Bake at 350F for 1 1/2 hours. In the last 1/2 hour, cover with foil to prevent burning.

(Candied Cherries may be added, if desired.)

Reference
Bentley, Amy. Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998.