Happy Holidays, One Potato Community! It just so happens that the first night of Chanukah falls on Christmas Day this year. After sharing Emily’s tips for creating your family’s own Christmas traditions, and Kristen’s recipe for Christmas brunch Eggs California, today our Community Voices essay is written by Ellen Frank Bayer, sharing her mom’s recipe for “Treasure Cake.”
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Chanukah Memories
By Ellen Frank Bayer
It’s always a rush in my house before Chanukah. The candles have to be lit, dinner has to be prepared, the presents need to be wrapped. Once we light the candles, we sit and watch them burn for at least 30 minutes – it is a religious custom not to do any work while the candles are burning. This is to symbolize that the candles are strictly lit to remind us of the miracle of Chanukah, and not to be used for reading or working.
No holiday meal could be complete unless my Mom baked her famous “Treasure Cake,” the recipe handed down from my Grandmother.
This is a depression era cake that includes lots of sugar, oil, and flour. It’s heavy and wet, a little moist to the touch. The “treasure” is the chocolate marbleized throughout the cake. My Mom taught me how to put the blobs of chocolate gently on top of the white batter and how to then use a knife to slowly stir in the chocolate blobs, with just a light touch, so each slice would have a good taste of thick chocolate.
Apricot nectar is the secret to moistness. I have tried to substitute soy milk or apple juice, but the thick nectar works best.
You can melt chocolate: use the dark, heavy baking chocolate bar, melt it with a bit of margarine. If you want to do it the old fashioned way, put it in a small pyrex dish and place it in a pot of boiling water. Let it simmer over a low flame for about 20 minutes. Stir it every five minutes.
If you are in a rush, melt the chocolate in a microwave, but be stingy with the time. Take it 20 seconds at a time: open the microwave, give it a stir, and put it back in for another 20 seconds. Do this a few times until the chocolate is melted.
The cake could be frozen for months, and I remember what my Mom always said: “it would defrost going down” if you had to take it out of the freezer and serve it for drop-in guests. It was a large cake, about 11 x 13 inches, and was baked in a silver pan. Some of the pans were actually developing trays from analog camera film. My mom’s brother Issac was into photography and I think the family had extra developing trays lying around.
—> Behind the Paywall: Read the rest of Ellen’s story and Grandma’s “Treasure Cake” recipe…
At Mom’s house: The table is piled high with newspapers, cookbooks, receipts, old mail. Why can’t we find a clean spot just to cool a cake down? I don’t know.
I guess my parents always had a lot on their minds and were busy people. My mom was going to school way into her seventies and she was always working on a paper. My father was a grocer and was always bringing home coupons for my mom to cut out and count.
He earned a coupon for every case of products that he sold. He collected Tropicana coupons for all the cases of orange juice he sold and Friendship coupons for the cases of Friendship products he sold. My first bicycle was a present from Friendship, bought with the coupons earned from selling cartons and cartons of Friendship products. My mom’s first and only dishwasher came from Tropicana. She never hooked it up to the water pipe and it became the extra closet for all her dishes which she never used, once paper plates became more practical.
One distinct memory stands out: My mom busying herself with the rest of the holiday preparations. She put the cake next to the window and forgot about it, and the window was open to cool the kitchen down. She got herself involved in peeling potatoes for the latkes and forgot about the cake. Next thing we know, Mom turns around and notices a squirrel seated on top of the dishwasher, happily eating the marble cake!
My Mom screamed. The squirrel, startled, scared, dropped the cake and ran away.
In case you want to make your own “Treasure Cake,” or in case you need to bake another cake because your first cake gets eaten by a squirrel, here is the recipe.
The original recipe came from my Grandmother and is known as “Mama’s Treasure Cake.”
Mama’s Treasure Cake
PREP TIME: 15-20 minutes BAKING TIME: 1 hour
Ingredients:
- 12 oz. can apricot nectar
- 5 eggs
- 3 c. all-purpose flour
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 1⁄2 c. shortening (Crisco or Spry)
- 1 1⁄2 c. sugar
- 3 Tbsp cocoa plus 1 Tbsp sugar OR
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 11 x 13” baking pan.
Prepare the Cake Batter:
- In a large mixing bowl, cream together the sugar with the vegetable shortening. (You can also substitute vegetable oil.)
- Alternate adding in the flour and apricot nectar to the mixing bowl, slowly stirring. Add the baking powder, vanilla, and a pinch of salt.
- Add eggs and mix in.
Prepare the Chocolate:
- Pour the batter into your baking pan, reserving about 1⁄4 of the batter. Add 3 Tbsp of cocoa and 1 Tbsp of sugar OR add 3 cubes of unsweetened chocolate plus 1 Tbsp margarine (melted) to the reserved batter.
Combine & Bake:
- Put blobs of the chocolate batter mixture on top of the cake batter in the pan. Use a knife to cut through the batter, to create marbling. Don’t mix it too much so the chocolate stays together.
- Bake at 350 degrees for one hour.
Enjoy!
About:
Ellen Frank Bayer is a lifelong New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn. Although she has now moved to Long Island, she’s never lost her Brooklyn accent.
From Ellen: “Many thanks to my wonderful parents Gladys and Leon Frank, who created a lifetime of memories to write about. Thank you to Diane Zinna and her creative morning magic writing circle where this story was incubated.”
