Farmer Boy Recipe - Tomato Soup Cake

This recipe comes from my collection of family recipes.  If I had to choose a "Top 10 List" of recipes from my childhood, this would be in that list!  My great aunt made this cake for every special occasion in the family.
My family was not "Big" on cakes!  They were not a wealthy family and thought of cakes as being very extravagant.  So it was a very big deal to enjoy a homemade cake!  (Maybe that seemed to make it taste even better!)  This recipe was my great aunt's interpretation of the Campbell's Soup Tomato Cake Recipe that came out somewhere in the 1920's.  She left school at the eighth grade level to go out to work to help the family.  This would have been about the time that this recipe came out in a Campbell's promotion.  She had taken a job working in an A&P Grocery, just a half block from home.  So, I figure she would have taken advantage of getting dented cans of soup at a reduced price; even though soup was only about a dime back then - but during those hard times, you'd have to squeeze "Old Lincoln's head" till he'd cry!

Here she is, working at the Grocery!

My aunt is now long gone, but this is still a great recipe, after those 90-plus years have passed.  When I make this cake, loving memories of her flood back over my soul.

Farmer Boy Tomato Soup Cake

Ingredients:

• 2 Cups - all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 Cups - sugar
• 4 teaspoons - baking powder
• 1 teaspoon - baking soda
• 1 teaspoon - allspice or ground white pepper
• 1 teaspoon - ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon - ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon - ground nutmeg
• 1/2 Cup - raisins
• 1 Can of tomato soup (condensed - not diluted)
• 1/2 Cup of shortening
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 Cup of water or milk

Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  In a large bowl - combine all the dry ingredients.  In another bowl - combine the water, eggs, and melted shortening.  Mix the wet ingredients into the dry.  Pour into a lightly greased and floured baking pan. (a 9 inch square one works good) Bake for 30 - 35 minutes.  Let it sit in the pan a few minutes to cool and then transfer to a wire rack to cool the rest of the way.  When it has cooled, frost it with a cream cheese frosting.

Farmer Boy Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1 - 8 oz. package of cream cheese
• 5 Tablespoons - unsalted butter (softened)
• 2 teaspoons - vanilla
• 1/2 Cup of Sour Cream
• 2 1/2 Cups of Powdered Sugar

Directions: Cream the butter and sugar.  Add the cream cheese and sour cream.  Mix well.  Finally, add the vanilla.  (If you can keep from eating it right out of the bowl,  it is more than enough to frost the top of this cake.)

Some of the best recipes have come during those hard times!  It seems that people want to please their stomach and cheer themselves up more when they are going through rough times.  Eating foods like this, helps us to remember better times. And being nostalgic helps us to relax.  The stressful economic times today, echo those of the Great Depression years; so I think it's time to bring back some of those old recipes as well. 

If you ty this recipe, please let us all know by leaving a comment here.  Thanks. The Old Man in the Bib Overalls

"A woman's real business is the keeping of the house and caring for the family." Laura Ingalls Wilder