Grandma's Wartime Baking Book: World War II and the Way We Baked [Hardcover]

Joanne Lamb Hayes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2003

Anyone who loves great American desserts will delight in Grandma's Wartime Baking Book. The result of extensive research, interviews, and recipe testing, Joanne Lamb Hayes's follow-up to Grandma's Wartime Kitchen delivers beloved and still irresistible recipes for cakes, pies, cookies, cobblers, muffins, breads, and other baked treats created by women on the Home Front during the challenging days of World War II.

Faced with rationing of sugar and butter (as well as canned and frozen goods, coffee, and more), calls for better nutrition, and waning morale, home bakers found clever ways to make quick and delicious desserts, for their families at home as well as their loved ones on the frontlines. Many of these recipes are collected in this volume, along with quotes, anecdotes, and baking tips from magazines and home bakers from the period, and illustrations and advertisements that capture the spirit and concerns of the era.

Recipes include:

* Sweet Potato Victory Cake - originally made with sweet potatoes from the backyard Victory Garden
* Apple Coffee Cake - a World War II favorite, with a twist
* Strawberry "Long" Cake - making the most of a quart of precious berries
* Apricot Peach Pie - with flavor and sweetness from dried apricots and heavy syrup
* Tea Party Tarts - easy to make, and morale-lifting after a sparse wartime meal
* Peanut Butter Cookies - Nutritious, butter- and sugar-free, and great for shipping to the troops overseas
* Mrs. Nesbitt's Whole Wheat Bread - a favorite recipe from Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's White House cook

These delicious, quick, and easy recipes are perfect for today's busy bakers, and they offer a long-overdue salute to the resourceful, inventive, and patriotic women who created them.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Joanne Lamb Hayes offers a sentimental collection of recipes for baked goods created during World War II in Grandma's Wartime Baking Book, her follow-up to Grandma's Wartime Kitchen. Because butter and refined sugar were hard to come by and rationed, and the thousands of married women who joined the work force were still expected to continue running their households like tight ships, these recipes for cookies, tarts, cakes, and breads are low in fat and refined sugar, very quick to throw together, and couldn't be any easier to make.

Expected to work all day, serve fresh, hot, nutritious meals on beautifully set tables, keep lush victory gardens bursting with nutritious fruits and vegetables for eating and canning, and always present themselves impeccably dressed and coiffed, there were not very many free moments in the day. So just a few minutes is all it took to get an Apple Coffee Cake into the oven, and the result is a remarkably tender, upside-down apple cake, dripping with a warm brown sugar and spiced apple syrup. Other desserts such as rich Peanut Butter-Chocolate Cupcakes and Butterscotch Squares thrilled families back then as much as they do today. Even the most old-fashioned of these recipes fit nicely into today's lifestyles. The ingredient lists are short and inexpensive--you probably already have most of the ingredients in the house. The results are comfort food at its best, and none of them take any time at all to put together. Taking a stroll down Memory Lane with Hayes is surprisingly delicious. --Leora Y. Bloom

From Publishers Weekly

What might have been merely a reminiscence of mediocre WWII-era foods is instead an interesting, thoughtfully rendered collection of comforting recipes for baked treats-from Butterscotch Squares and Banana Dumplings to Huckleberry Pudding and Apple Pandowdy. Many of the recipes in this volume exist because of shortages of certain ingredients such as sugar, shortening, butter, eggs; others employ ingredients to save them from being wasted. Hayes (Grandma's Wartime Kitchen) explains the background for each recipe-"Government warnings about waste made it a real necessity to use up those bananas that would soon be overripe"-in a manner that is educational without being preachy, and serves as a subtle reminder to appreciate the abundance that now exists in the U.S. Images from wartime posters and excerpts from advertisements of the day enhance the homey, nostalgic feel of this book and make it a fun read for those who lived through the war.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (November 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312306288
• ISBN-13: 978-0312306281
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #805,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classy book, April 28, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Grandma's Wartime Baking Book: World War II and the Way We Baked (Hardcover)

This book, discusses food prep, rationing and offers a historical prospective to foods prepared and served during WWII. Rationing is well explained here. I became interested in WWII cooking after I read that diabetes, obesity etc levels DECREASED during the war years. I feel this is due in part to the rationing of fats and sugers. Grandma's Wartime Baking shares baking recipes that are lower in fat and sugar. Lemon, Huckleberry, and bread puddings are included here. The cookie section offers lower sugar treats such as Gingersnaps, Apple Butter, Carrot, and Prune cookies. The oatmeal icebox cookies are good as are the butterscotch Bars. 18 Cookie recipes are in the book. Also another factor is the lack of time many women experienced- a result of women going to work. Most of the recipes are not time comsuming. The muffin chapter is impressive. Muffins and quick breads were the ideal solution for busy moms in the morning. Applesauce muffins, Popovers, Orange Marmalade Bread and Quick Cheese Bread are only a few of the offerings. Other chapters include Celebration cakes, (wedding cake is here) Cakes, Cobblers, Pies, and on and on. The cover jacket is charming, with a WWII look to it and red checkered edging. 5 stars from me.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fun cookbook and a bit of history, July 4, 2005

By 

Pam Tee "Busy Mom" - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Grandma's Wartime Baking Book: World War II and the Way We Baked (Hardcover)

The previous reviewer did a wonderful job in summarizing the chapters of this book so I will refrain from repeating and instead will say that this book is a "good read".

There are those out there that like to occasionally peruse cookbooks (and you know who you are) but in this case there is more to think about than whether you have all the ingredients on hand. It is interesting to contemplate how much WWI and WWII affected our culture and how adaptive our forebearers were when shortages occurred. There are plenty of examples of propaganda, ration cards and excerpts from women's magazines to keep one up at night or dawdling at the kitchen table over coffee.

Enjoy!
ps -- I have made the cocoa icing and the marshmellow topped cake and both came out well.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a wonderful cookbook, April 17, 2011

By 

raven_mist - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Grandma's Wartime Baking Book: World War II and the Way We Baked (Hardcover)

This is a great cookbook for busy cooks. I purchased it because I prefer to cook my meals a bit old fashioned. This book has wonderful recipes. I also like how this book talks about some of the history from the war and rationing. Those times remind me a bit of now. Prices are going up and we need to go back to basics. Thank you for this good book. I received the book quickly and looking forward to cooking out of it everyday.