For Anonymous

Anonymous left a request for the Eggless Cake recipe, but didn't leave a link so I could respond back to her/him directly.  Anonymous, I hope you are checking back.

Eggless Cake:

Preheat oven to 325

In a large heavy pan:**

1 2/3 cup shortening
2 cups sugar
2 cups water
3 tsp cinnamon*
3 tsp nutmeg*
1 1/2 tsp ground clove*
1 1/2 cups raisins*

*My husband has requested more of the spices, so I always use heaping teaspoons.  And, according to him, you can never have too many raisins or walnuts. I usually put in more than 1 1/2 cups of raisins.

Heat until shortening is completely melted.  Remove from heat and let cool.  While mixture is cooling, grease and flour loaf pans. (2 - 9 1/4 x 5 1/4 pans or 3 - 8 1/4 x 4 1/4 pans).  Note: even though I regularly use a vegetable spray on other pans when doing  baking, I've never used it when making Eggless. So I have no idea if the cakes will come out of the pans easily if vegetable spray is used.)

To mixture in the pan add:

3 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Mix well.  (This can be done by hand. I use my electric hand mixture right in the pot. I guess you could transfer everything from the pot to the bowl of a stand mixer, but it just adds one more thing to clean up.)

Stir in 1 to 2 cups chopped walnuts.  (Chop if you want.  I use walnut halves and pieces and just break up the large pieces with my hand.)

Pour into the prepared loaf pans.  Bake at 325 for about 50  to 55 minutes.  Be sure to leave some in the pan because you (or in my house, my husband) will want to lick the pan, the beaters, stirring spoon......DO NOT OVERCOOK or it will be too dry!  I've been making this for so many years that I can tell when it's finished just by looking at it in the oven and lightly pressing my finger on the top. I would guess that if a toothpick was inserted in the middle, it should come out fairly clean with maybe a few crumbs attached.  

 My 30 year old, hand written Eggless Cake recipe

When done, remove it from the pan immediately on to a cooling rack. (turn pan upside down and lift it off)  Ideally, it should cool completely before cutting, but that rarely happens at our house. My husband likes it cut in about 1/2" to 1" slices.  My mother made a similar bread that she cut in narrower slices and served with butter spread on it.

Eggless freezes well and travels well.  My MIL use to send it to Ireland to her son who was serving a mission there.  This was back before the days of FEDEX.  My BIL said it always arrived in good shape and tasted great.  In Ireland, Eggless became known as Carol's Cake (Carol was my MIL's name).

Over the years, I have made multiple recipes of Eggless and baked it in small disposable mini loaf pans. When using these pans, I don't remove the cake from the pan after baking.  These mini loaves have gone to neighbors and friends.  Since I am now the only one in my husband's family who makes Eggless, I have to make sure that my BILs get their Eggless at Christmas as well.

And just in case you are wondering the calorie count?  Do you really want to know?  Several years ago, my husband figured it out, as best he could.  One recipe of Eggless is 4153 calories and 59% fat.  I guess it's a good thing that it's only made once a year, because he can easily consume an entire batch of Eggless.

There will be no picture of the finished product.  I most likely won't be making Eggless for a couple of more weeks.


** When I first starting making Eggless, I had a cheap set of pots and pans. The largest pot from that set was what I used to make Eggless.  Later when I got a better set of pots and pans, I still used that original cheap pot. About 15 years ago, I got a set of expensive All Clad cookware.  But Eggless was still made in that original pot.  I guess that I didn't want to mess with the success of the original Eggless.  A couple of years ago, I decided to use the large All Clad pot when I made a batch of Eggless.  I learned that cheap or expensive, it really didn't matter.  That original pot just sits at the back of the cupboard, now.  I can't quite get rid of it.