Tomato Soup Cake

When my mother died of cancer at the age of forty, her recipe for her tomato soup cake went with her. With eight kids, chaos was often underfoot, especially at the holidays, but my mom’s tomato soup cake came as close to being a staple of our dinner as the twenty-pound turkey. That she could make a cake with a can of Campbell’s tomato soup, which we usually partnered with Kraft grilled cheese sandwiches on a Friday night, veered on a miracle of science. The cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg combined for a savory, cider-like smell and the chopped walnuts and raisins created a pop of surprise and texture. When my mother poured the batter into the oblong pan, my brothers and I would grab a tablespoon and jockey with each other for the best position to lick the empty mixing bowl. In a grudging display of fairness, we deeded the little kids the bowl from the butter-cream white frosting, a close second. Chocaholics to a one, we recklessly abandoned the cocoa and replaced it with this magical spice cake.

But as a teenager, I hid my mother’s death. Is your mother coming to the play? I’d answer no and leave it at that--the sin of omission. If I did not mention her death, I thought I could keep the grayness of that ever-present loss at a manageable distance. When the holidays rolled around, as they always do, I might experience a thread of a memory of that dessert—that tomato soup cake and I’d dismiss the memory as if it were unworthy, unwelcome. I coped, but I did not cook..

Three years after my mother’s death, on a wintry Friday night I was hanging out in the kitchen of a friend’s house across the river on the other side of town. Linda was cat-eyed pretty, never without a boyfriend, and at the far edge of the cool spectrum in our high school class. I couldn’t compete. The rest of us were maneuvering to find our niche in the junior class. To Linda’s increasing frustration, her short, pixie-haired mother floated in and out of the crowded kitchen. I never consciously set out to study the interactions of mothers and daughters, how they treated one another, but like a traveler stopping in a foreign land, I watched their behavior, customs unknown to me. By then, my father had remarried and I knew my stepmother and I were playing with a different set of rules. There were no casual gatherings in my kitchen. I could never roll my eyes with my stepmother the way Linda did so casually with her mother.

After twenty minutes or so, Mrs. P. placed a dinner plate filled with perfectly cut squares of frosted tomato soup cake on the table. When we finished eating, I told Mrs. P. that my mother had baked tomato soup cake for us and asked her if she could give me the recipe. I broke my silence. And, worse,  I did not feel cool.

A week later, Linda approached me at my locker and handed me a sheet of small-sized notebook paper. “Here, Carole, my mother wanted you to have this recipe. She said you asked for it.”  I thanked her and asked her to thank her mother. Watching her walk down the hall in her perfectly ironed sharp-pleated skirt, a skirt her mother had ironed, I tucked the recipe on the top shelf of my locker. I had a piece of my mother. Forty years have passed and I still have that typed recipe in its original form. This Thanksgiving, I will again be making my tomato soup cake and I plan on licking the bowl.

Tomato Soup Cake

1 cup shortening
1 can tomato soup
3 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup seedless raisins
1 cup sugar
1 cup cold water
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon nutmeg
chopped nuts

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream shortening and sugar; add well beaten eggs and cream well.
3. Combine soup with water and baking soda and add to creamed mixture.
4. Sift flour, spices, and baking powder. Add to soup mixture.
5. Add raisins and nuts.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. Makes 12 x 15 inch loaf or two smaller ones.





© Carole Gaunt