Visions of Gumdrop Cake December 30, 2024 419 words

Fellow writer and blogger, Alice Massa, wrote about her family’s recipe for Butter Horn cookies here is her blog address. http://alice13wordwalk.wordpress.com/. The. cookie recipe is December 21st.
I recall my Mother making small loafs of gumdrop cakes for Christmas. So not to tempt eager samplers ,she made the majority of the treats when we were in school. After cooling, she wrapped them in aluminum foil. thin red ribbon was tied to each cake with a red bow in the center of the ribbon’s crossing ties. They would keep for weeks in the freezer .They would remove them a day or two before giving them to friends and family. As we grew, the recipe was changed from gumdrops to spice drops. Fruit flavors were replaced with cinnamon, cloves, anise wintergreen and mint.
I found the original recipe on his computer. It was for making a large bundt cake or 3 larger loaves of cakes. I made a half of the recipe when we found a pound of the candy on sale.recipe. It made enough for three small loaves of cake. The cooking time decreased to one hour, not two.on my husband’s computer. The recipe makes 6 snall rectangle cakes. The cooking time is 250 degrees for ninety minutes. Our cakes were cooked at 60 minutes. This is to keep the candy from changing shape.
Mom would keep a supply of these cakes to hand out during the Christmas season. The recipe is below. The only change was to use butter instead of oleo or Crisco. My apologies Mom. They brought back fond memories of digging out the candy to eat first.I will give one to my younger brother when I see him after the New Year.

Rita’s Gumdrop Cake

1 cup butter or Crisco or oleo
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups of hot apple sauce with 1 rounded tsp of soda
2 well beaten eggs
2 cups of flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp allspice
2 pounds spice drops
1 pound raisins
2 cups of nuts
Cream oleo and sugar. Add hot applesauce. Then add
well-beaten eggs. Sift dry ingredients together.
Roll gumdrops, raisins and nuts into 2 cups of flour.
Add this to the mixture.
Grease and flour pans
Bake at 250 degrees until toothpick comes out dry. 1 to 2 hrs depending on the size of the loaf.
This makes a large angel food pan or 2 or 3 small square pans.
Also you could make 1/2 of the recipe.