My grandmother used to make this cake, cut it into little squares, then stack them two-deep with baking paper seperating the layers in a blue Royal Dansk tin. Thank you for the video, from South Australia!
@@TizianaTina My mother would bake about two thousand cookies at Christmas and fill dozens of Royal Danske tins and give them as gifts. Over the summer she would go back and get the f#@kin' tins from the people she gave the cookies to.
Yes - the Edmonds Cookbook is from New Zealand! It had just arrived in the post, I opened the envelope just as I was starting to film and hadn’t really realised that I was lumping it in with the Australian cook books... Apologies to New Zealand. I'm editing this comment to add that a lot of people are confused about what a 'Currant' is; you've fallen into a common trap of the English language... There are two completely unrelated things called Currants in English. Whenever a 'British' or Commonwealth baking recipe calls for Currants; they are indeed asking for the dried raisin of the Corinthian Grape. They are sometimes called Zante Currants or Corinthian Raisins: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zante_currant You are confusing them with Red or Black currants which are part of the Gooseberry family and almost always eaten or cooked fresh, or made into jam or jelly. I grow both in my garden.
I see treacle and Im in...a fave growing up with a british/french cdn grandmother.Since im in Windsor ont currently..and its lockdown...Molasses it is. Raisins?? Ill be leaving those out LMAO. I dont like bran muffins either Glen or obviously raisins.
Actually Edmonds flour was sold in both Australia and NZ housewives would send away for a cookbook... So even though it came from NZ it was popular in both countries
I assume (note: assume and could be very wrong), the largest difference on sweet things with Australia compared to a lot of the other commonwealth countries is we export more cane sugar than we import. So that makes treacle, golden syrup, and brown sugar much more common ingredients.
Word on that, I have lived most of my life in sugar cane growing country - North NSW and upwards. I went and visited Cairns last October, and their cane is nice and tall (I once heard Lismore grew 3 metres, while the far north can grow 4 metres before harvest). Not to mention the whole reason why we have a rum company in Bundaberg is likely due to sugar.
My country uses cane for everything, even for fuel. Sugarcane is used to power up motorbikes and cars, for food, for juice. But again we are the largest exporters of sugar in the world
Treacle goes in with the others. Perhaps this is just my Australian colloquial experience/upbringing but it seems quite clear that the treacle is part of the 'other ingredients' section and not to be lumped into the white sugar section.
@@edcrichton9457 oh yeah, I'm a child of the 80s, and I always had fruit cakes, including cherry cakes and apricot cakes, even blueberry cakes in bundt pan shaped. I have seen old 1960s jello recipes online in bundt pan or tube pan moulds. My grandmother and mother had a collection of these pans. lol So, I guess it's a generational thing that continues.
I think a regular round cake pan (it would probably have been 7 inches or 8 inches across in the early 20th century rather than 9 or 10 inches like modern cake pans) would also work, especially if you baked it at 250 or 275 degrees Fahrenheit, and it might also take 2 hours to bake, like the recipe states.
Yum! I make the 'melt and mix' version of this cake from a much-used Womens Weekly cookbook that belonged to my granny. Same ingredients except I melt the butter and treacle (or dark molasses) in a saucepan, let it cool, then mix in the dried fruit, eggs and flour. No need to use a mixer. And Glen is correct in suggesting a lower cooking temperature. I know what I'll be baking tomorrow!
Interesting recipe! As to the fireless cooker: my grandmother had something like that over here in Germany - it was called a "Kochkiste" ("cooking box") and it was insulated with hay. You would bring a stew or something similar to a boil, put it in there, and retrieve it after several hours (basically slow-cooking it without additional energy). They were widespread during WWII when cooking fuel supplies were irregular and electricity could not be relied upon to last all day. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochkiste
That is the comment I have been looking for. I live in Austria and a cookbook from shortly after WWII my grandmother had still included the instructions to build a "Kochkiste".
Black Treacle isn't very popular here in Australia anymore, and yeah partly because as vegemite addicts most of us; we preferred the malty flavour of Molasses once we had access to it. We still use golden syrup though, in biscuits or my own family tradition; for crunchy weetbix with a good splash of milk.
@@peterlamarche247 Sure, but In Aus in the dried fruit and nut aisle; Currents, Sultanas, Raisins are three separate products. It has been that way for so long you can argue semantics but come to Aus, they are different products. They have different taste, texture, (mouth feel). So you could say same same. But they are different. I love currents and Sultanas, Raisins are a bit gross though.
@@O2BSoLucky Dont forget the sun muscats too!! Now theres a taste sensation...sultana on a whole other scale. Lower portion of Australia is fantastic for grapes :)
I usually put the treacle or molasses in before the eggs just because it lets it incorporate into the butter/sugar mixture. I'm glad that you had such good results.
A fascinating fact, is that Lyle's who makes the treacle, has to have one of the strangest and most disturbing logo's around. There logo is reference to the Biblical story in the Book of Judges where Samson was travelling to the land of the Philistines in search of a wife. During that journey he killed a lion and when he passed the same spot on his return journey, he noticed that a swarm of bees had formed a nest, inside the stomach of the dead lions carcass. Their logo is that of that dead rotting lion, with a bees nest in it's stomach, that is swarming in bees.
If any of those books have steamed pudding please make it it's one of my favourites from mum's old Day to day cookery book which was used in home economics classes in Queensland at least in the 70s I have the current edition which is also what we use as our Anzac recipe reference. Anyway steamed pudding is essentially a vanilla cake before putting the batter in the pudding bowl you coat the sides with golden syrup and desiccated coconut, batter goes in, lid goes on, and put it in a large stock pot with boiling water and lid goes on the stock pot and leave to steam until cooked. Served with vanilla custard! Delicious! My family calls me gross when I mash all the cake into the custard but it's the only way in my opinion to get all the flavours in one bite!
You really to get a hold of the Australian CWA cookbook! Early edition are the best. That would have been baked in a combustion cooker like a argar cooker! Fired by coke type of coal!
Yum! I've seen recipes similar to this one in the UK, such as a Christmas cake. In the US where I live, we don't have treacle so if I made this cake, I'd definitely use molasses. I am curious the difference of flavor, though, even if it's subtle. We also don't have golden syrup but I found it at an international grocery store once and it blew my mind what I'd been missing my whole life! Golden syrup stirred into coffee tastes amazing! It's difficult to explain the unique flavor.
I would blend the treacle with the milk, then add it as requested. It is a liquid, and measuring it in the same pitcher with the milk means it eventually gets off the glass. And, molasses is the standard here, I buy it by the gallon. Thank you for this video. You can create a fireless cooker by putting your pan in the crockpot. It does take 2-3 hours, but it gives an incredible density.
Yes! I immediately thought this sounded just like my slow cooker recipes. I would take it just as it is, set it on a trivet inside my slow cooker, and cook, covered, as directed.
@@peshgirl I put a handknit dishcloth under the pan, because my crock is from the thrift store. And, I was shocked the first time I did this, because it was really good! A couple years ago, I located a crockpot cookbook, and it has neatly a dozen recipes for cake, which my mom thinks is crazy, because it doesn't brown. You can't convince her that is the point.
@@lifuranph.d.9440 Yes, it is liquid. But before it dissolves, it creams the butter to a light fluff. And, I could just pour the molasses into the sugar, but I just add them separately. It's a lot of work to separate the molasses from the sugar and then repackage both, and, to pack molasses soaked sugar into plastic bags, but culinary purposes for each exist. I'm not willing to pay for packaging, and I've yet to find a recipe where it matters that the molasses remains in the sugar, except for things like topping.
@@lifuranph.d.9440 Well funny you ask...but our commodes are quite different due to the water shortages we generally experience here. We dont have large bowls full of water but a different shape with maybe a litre of water in the bottom...and when it flushes it doesnt really swirl so much as cascade and swoosh out the bottom. Could explain why we dont loose so many pets to the toilet bowl, because it just doest look like a bathtub. More like upturned soda bottle...wide base, narrow mouth to flush out of.
In enjoy your channel because not only do you have assorted recipes from around the world but you treat them differently. Most cooking channels will say take product A , ad in product b etc. You will analyze the recipe as you make it. The when Jules comes in you two discuss the finished product and talk about its flavour. Love the discussions.
I looked up the fireless cooker and it’s also called a haybox. Food was heated to boiling, removed from the heat, put in an insulated box to finish cooking with residual heat.
Australia is a huge sugar cane grower/exporter so sugar based products were (back in the day) easily procured. Modern days golden syrup would be the go (what you would have used in the ANZAC biscuits) treacle/molasses not so readily available.
Here in the UK we have a cake called Parkin, its normally eaten around Halloween/Bonfire Night. Its pretty similar to this recipe just with oats and ginger instead of the mixed fruit and spices and I absolutely love it. Treacle can be very overpowering for my tastes, a little is OK but not too much.
We are Australian, And we have a substantial sugar cane industry. My grandmother Never made a Fruit cake without white hard icing on top. I spent a large portion of my life in that area, It was a working class area of Sydney, Auburn now is a Great place for Turkish food. I'm the last member of my family that knows how to make a (Boiled in Calico) Christmas Pudding
Oh god.. that takes me back (Aussie here), when I was young and my mum cooked this cake (or any cake, or biscuits) licking the beaters and scraping out the mixing bowl was always the best part!! :D
We used to use a 'Hay Box', you'd place your cast iron camp oven / Dutch oven into a wooden box lined with hay, go to to school, work, or church and the stew or cake would be perfectly cooked by the time you got back. As kids, we'd have the 'brown' cake/treacle cake with either thick custard or lashings of butter spread on it - Yum!
My wife immediately said add the Treacle with the sugar when you posed the question. Of course I agreed with her 😂. I would guess if you added it after the flour it might turn out to dense. Also, she said to measure the Treacle in the same cup you measured the butter in. Interesting cake. Going to give it a try. Would be curious to see how it would be at 300 for an hour.
This turned out amazing! To meet my husband's dietary needs, I used gluten free flour and almond milk. I baked it for about 60 minutes on 325. Moist and earthy, this is a great recipe!
I'd love to see you try this again in a crock pot and see how it turns out, even if you don't make a video and put it on a community post that would be interesting and may get you closer to the intended method you talked about at the end.
I went to church at auburn Methodist, the good old days, we can’t get black treacle here now, an English product, but we can get normal treacle, not so dark, so I normally add molasses to get it a bit darker. Wish we could get fresh cranberries in Australia. Love to visit Canada, such a lovely country,thanks so much for the memories
There is a cook book from this time period from Bulgaria. But as many classic works we have translated, this is not one of them. So I cannot share it with any of the history inclined cooking RU-vidrs I watch...
This is a very common Australian cake even by todays standards. I know multiple multiple families that have made this cake or subtle variations on it. What an excellent first Australian recipe!
That Edmonds is a NZ cookbook as others said. It looks like a 1955-1969 Deluxe Edition. It was first printed in 1908. It's like The Joy of Cooking for NZ. If you're trying to buy early NZ cookbooks pre 1950, it is hard to find online try a Dunedin book store called Dead Souls. I would assume this cake was meant for a different smaller deeper sized tin at a lower temperature. Possibly brown paper wrapped.
Yep agree its the 1955-1967 edition deluxe cookery book. Wondering what Glen will make of Toheroa Soup, Whitebait Fritters and Tree Tomato Jam which are in the book :)
I'm British so of course I grew up with treacle, I now live in Spain where I substitute miel de cana when recipes call for treacle, but, they are very different beasts since I could happily eat a spoonful of miel de cana but treacle has such a bitter after taste it's a cooking only ingredient. 🙀
I highly recommend for Australian community cookbooks The Country Women’s Association Cookbook, it’s what we grew up with making stuff from in my family, for at least two generations!
aussie here i remember eating that cake when i was a kid my grandma had a series of sweet treats treacle cake, pumpkin scones, pumpkin sultana cake, roly poly (jam or mixed peel) or my fave rock cakes thankyou for re introducing me to my childhood faves. tbink im off to make trwaxle cake right now as i have some sitting in my cupboard just waiting
Interesting! There’s a few major epochs in Aussie cooking I know of, Federation -> WWI/II, Post WWII -> Metrication and Metric -> Now and all have a variety of recipes, especially if you look between our states as while they’re connected in some ways, methods and techniques and variations split a lot between especially Victoria, NSW and Adelaide (SA) There’s a ton of really interesting recipes from the dawn of metric in Australia that are really different and not around or common these days but were staples of most 80s/90s households. You should try to get a hold of the Victorian Country Women’s Association cookbooks, which were the de facto cookbook for a lot of homes, and especially the 1981 edition (which I have a copy of physically and digitally and can share the digital) as a lot of the core recipes people remember and used here came from books like that.
With the treacle, quite a few of the later recipes (around 60's) for similar recipes do add it late in the process. Gives 'streaks' of treacle through the cake. A similar recipe in my cookbooks says to 'steam for 2 hours'.
If you have an Edmonds cookbook, you have a New Zealand cookbook. Edmonds was started in New Zealand, and was particularly important in Christchurch, where it had a major factory on Ferry Road. The factory's gardens and some outbuildings with its rising sun logo remain to this day.
This reminds me of this bread my wife and her family turned me on to when visiting her family in the uk.. have you ever heard malt loaf, looks close to what you've made differences being it has malt and for the fruit it has mixed fruits like raisins currants and prunes, a slice of that with a little butter makes a great snack
There oven is a tatacua(Paraguayan oven made of bricks, mud or rocks) or also used in pizza cooked ovens. You start a fire inside of it when the fires dies you clean it, taking the ash and un burned wood and then cook inside. Very popular in all colonies and poor countries that had no electricity or gas stoves. Great video will try
Australian here. The Auburn Methodist (now Uniting) Church is in Melbourne, just around the corner from me. It’s a handsome late nineteenth century building with an impressive tower.
This is almost the exact cake that we made in diamond drilling camps in Northern Manitoba years ago. No idea what it was called. It was from a company (Hudson Bay Exploration & Development from Flin Flon) cookbook that camp cooks used. Just hand mixed and baked is crude gas of wood ovens. Always delicious.
Fun fact: Chambers gas ranges were based on the idea of fireless cooking, with insulated ovens that utilize retained heat for cooking. Or as they advertised, "Cooks with the Gas Turned Off!" Cakes don't generally take long enough to benefit from this method, but large, tough cuts of meat that need to braise come out perfectly. Our Model C is ~70 years old and still cooking (with the gas turned off, of course).
I make a gingerbread cake similar too this - recipe calls for molasses, and is an old Shaker recipe. And, instead of your fruit, it uses jarred mincemeat. It too makes a cake this size, and calls for long cook time. I do the same thing u did. Is excellent. Maybe I’ll order some treacle!
Yes tea! I've just started drinking tea again to help replace my coffee addiction with another one. But this cake looks like it would be complimented by either coffee or tea.
I remember my Grandmother used to cook something similar to this but she put in date, walnut and ginger. I used to love it but no-one got the recipe before she passed. She was an exceptional cook. Even in the 1980's when she was in her 80s she hand beat butter and sugar together and made a whole cake by hand while her Sunbeam Mixmaster sat in the cupboard. She usually only used it for the big Christmas cake or birthday cakes. Maybe all that exercise was why she lived so long. I'm 58 and still miss her. My parents owned a cattle station in the Northern Territory and we kids stayed with Tilla, my Gran, while in high school in Brisbane. Rest in Peace Tilla. 💗 What do Canadians call a cattle station? A ranch, like America?
If you really want to build a 1900s fireless oven you could substitute the asbestos with modern heating proof cladding and fire bricks. It sounds like a neat idea!
I do like to put currents in scones because they are smaller. When I cut the dough to form the scones, the currents do not squash the dough around them. Raisins can squash the dough when the knife hits them and deform it as I cut into it to form the scones.
I have had this with a coffee icing. Just ordinary instant coffee and icing sugar with water. The bitter/sweet icing goes well with the spices and sweetness in the cake.
According to the internet, the design dates back to 1885. It took me an embarrassing number of years before I realized the lion on the label is, in fact, dead, and covered in flies. Not sure why they thought a rotting animal carcass was a good way to sell sugar, but hey, 19th century. Apparently it's a biblical reference.
@@MmntechCa I think every home in the UK has a tin of Lyles Golden Syrup or Black Treacle in the cupboard, although it is usually something that has been there since 1986
@@MmntechCa It's from Samson, after he killed the Lion some Bee's formed a hive and made honey in the carcass! read it to it what you will! Abram Lyle who founded the company was deeply religious apparently
I would bet you could substitute fire bricks instead of the asbestos. At that point you could heat up a thick sheet of cast iron that has been in the fire for a while. *If you decide to give it a try I suggest McMaster Carr for the iron at least. They have everything.
I'm not sure replacing asbestos sheeting with fire bricks would work. Asbestos was a heat insulating and shielding material, where as fire bricks absorb and then release the heat. The thermodynamics of both materials are totally different.
Looks very similar to Brown Bread made by the B&M company. That is wonderful with a simple meal of franks and beans. The "Bread" comes in a can with or w/o raisins slice to about 3/4 inch and fry in butter till slightly crisp.
I'm with you, Glen. Not a fan of bran muffins unless my husband uses his recipe from a restaurant that he used to cook in. They mixed a can of cherry pie filling into the batter. It's very moist and quite tasty. I've never been a fan of raisins either until I was pregnant the first time, oddly enough. And I don't eat dark fruit cakes either... But that looks yummy.
Interesting recipe - I'm English, lived in US a long time, now in Australia: couple thoughts about this recipe - 1, surprised they didn't warm the black treacle as that makes it much easier to use - but perhaps down here in the summer it's going to be pretty fluid - and yes, I've substituted molasses which is OK, 2, sultanas, raisins & currants aren't exactly the same/interchangeable - they are various types of grapes, dried, to be used for different taste and mouth appeal similarly, I suppose to a wine grape, which accounts for many old fruit cake recipes including them all, plus cherries & candied peel - if you only used one fruit you'd have a very different cake. However, a lot of people in UK hate currants, as they pack a punch & can be seedy, so prefer raisins. I love sultanas they are juicy & seedless, but I used to have great problems finding them in the US. Reg raisins can generally be soaked to beef up their flavour, currants & sultanas apparently don't absorb flavors as readily as raisins do. If using the candied peel, I'd probably use a few ounces - tablespoon - it does add a nice tartness & depth of flavour; again, when making Christmas cakes, I used to have problems finding this around the Great Lakes. Lastly, back in the day, (turn of last century-ish, pre WWII) I would think a British tea-type cake would either be a variation of a square, round or loaf, which would account for the longer cooking time, as the cake would be 2-3X's deeper, especially if cooked in the 'fireless' cooker. I had only ever made ginger bread and flap jacks in a sheet cake pan - I only saw cakes cooked like that once I moved to MI! Now of course, people like shallow pans for faster results. Great recipe which I shall try one day, thanks, Glen & Jules.
This reminded me of a cake that Entenmanns used to sell called Spice Cake. I have always wanted to try treacle. We have a few times of molasses here, including one called Black Strap, which this kind of looked like to me. I could be wrong.
I think treacle is the same as black strap molasses. I use breer rabbit brand and it has 3 kinds of molasses.. black strap(strongest flavor), full flavor and mild flavor. Treacle or blackstrap has a bitter aftertaste.
Treacle used in Germany to make bread a little darker or for breakfast on toast, bread, or Brötchen (for some cookie recipe as well). Called Rübensirup, easy to get, but molasses is realy hard to find.
In the US we have sulfured and un sulfured molasses. I would use the unsulfured, that's what is sold in grocery stores. When I make my great-grandma's dark ginger cake I use sulfured molasses though.
Hi Glen there is a huge difference between raisins and currants. A raisin is a dried grape and currant that is one of the various shrubs belonging to the saxifrage family and the fruit of that shrub is dried becoming a currant. Currants are cultivated in the cooler regions of Europe and North America and are also used for making jams and jellies.
@Johan Verbon You've fallen into a common trap of the English language... There are two completely unrelated things called Currants in English. Whenever a 'British' or Commonwealth baking recipe calls for Currants; they are indeed asking for the dried raisin of the Corinthian Grape. They are sometimes called Zante Currants or Corinthian Raisins: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zante_currant You are confusing them with Red or Black currants which are part of the Gooseberry family and almost always eaten or cooked with fresh. I grow both in my garden.
@@GlenAndFriendsCooking LOL that's the first one for me, thanks for your comment. Keep up the lovely Sunday old cookbook show. When ever need some information about European style recipes please feel free to contact me. I'm a trained chef and have a small library of 150 old cookbooks.
@@sensetaste7716 To be extra confusing, Australia uses the word currant to simultaneously mean a dried grape and the dried fruit of red and black currants from the gooseberry family, while sultana is specifically used to refer to the dried fruit of Thompson grapes
Put the tin of treacle into a bowl of hot wet before you pour it into the jug, it thins the viscosity, then leave the jug of treacle in a bowl of hot water until it's pouring time. It will come out a lot easier without resorting to oil.
These kind of dark cakes store really well in cool conditions. Soak the cooked cake with brandy or Sherry or rum, wrap it up tightly and store in a well sealed tin and it will keep for several weeks and the flavour will improve too!
I bet dark molasses and dark treacle are so close in their use that easily obtained molasses would be a good substitute. It would probably taste great. I know I love spice cake made with molasses.
There should be modern asbestos-free alternative fire / kiln materials you could buy if you still want to build a fireless cooker. I would love to see you make one.
I live in the north-west of England on Guy Fawkes night 5th of November We have something like that cake we have it sliced and a bit of unsalted butter on spread on it
