I return to it again, with all its baggage, as we enter a new crossroads of crises today. The adaptability of wacky cake has allowed it to last from generation to generation in my family, across various moments of uncertainty. Just as it signaled economic struggle in the past, wacky cake has come to represent the struggle farmers have found themselves in the twenty-first century. It asks if we should get rid of them altogether. 10 It is a dessert no longer asking to ration dairy ingredients.
Wacky cake is vegan chocolate cake a dessert that further signals vulnerability of the dairying business. 9 But we are also in ecological and health crises, and my Mama’s wacky cake recipe has been rebranded yet again. Intelligencer Journal (Lancaster, PA), February 25, 1961.įarm families are in crisis, and wacky cake is far from the remedy to sustain the dairy industry. The author’s grandmother (pictured far right) voted FFA Chapter Queen. Farmers hoped these promotional efforts would concretize milk’s place in kitchens across America, but the promotional materials were mostly consumed by other dairy farming families. 8 One of the ways women did this was through publishing dairy-based recipes in local newspapers, pamphlets, and cookbooks. 7 Both programs emerged in the 1950s and enlisted young farm women to encourage the non-farming public to consume milk. Mama was a Future Farmers of America (FFA) Chapter Queen and my mother was an Alternate Dairy Princess.
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But farm women like my Mama have also had the added pressure of demonstrating her full support for the family dairying business in the kitchen. Given its ties to patriotism and farm education, wacky cake made it into my family’s cookbook. 6 With it, women could bring the luxury of dessert-the joy, celebration, and sweetness-to American tables even in the darkest of times. 5 Featured in 4-H competitions and home economics textbooks, wacky cake became part of an arsenal of recipes wielded by the women who would hold the family unit together through prosperity and hardship. 4Ī 4-H member wins a prize for a wacky cake demonstration, The Star Press (Muncie, IN), June 12, 1948.Īfter World War II, wacky cake rebranded itself again from dessert-in-crisis to a staple recipe for training rural girls to become heteronormative housewives. 28th division of the 112th infantry, where he was wounded in the drive across France into Germany. armed forces, sharing the same timeline as her father’s service in the U.S.
3 It was touted as a “favorite recipe” of the U.S. War cakes became “Depression cakes,” which became my Mama’s specific “wacky cake” by World War II.
2 Despite this resistance, the significance of war cake ingredients allowed it to reemerge and adapt during economic and political upheaval. After the Great War, “war cakes” seemingly transformed back into regular desserts, often abandoned given their ties to scarcity and hardship. The hesitancy and tension that accompanies this dessert-misspelling and all-speaks to its prior promise and purpose: a recipe handed down and prepared by American women to treat their families in times of crisis.Īlthough dairy was missing, patriotism made up wacky cake’s origins as a popular rationing cake during World War I. I smile at my mother’s misspelling of “wacky” as “wackie” in the version handed down to me. The wacky cake the author made while writing this essay.
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