More Than a Simple Date Cake

I’d have to say my grandmother, my mother’s mother, ‘invented’ my favorite family recipe although it wasn’t until many years later that I realised it wasn’t something that everyone ate. My mother and her sisters grew up in the 1940’s and their family didn’t have a lot. My grandfather got work from time to time with the road crews in Saskatchewan but, for the most part, they lived on what my grandmother grew in her garden along with the eggs from her laying hens. They would only have meat when she butchered one of the old hens who wasn’t laying anymore or if my grandfather was able to bring something home from one of his hunting trips.

One of my grandfather’s favorite desserts was Matrimonial Cake. For those who are not familiar with this recipe, it is kind of like a date square. I’m not certain why it is called Matrimonial Cake but according to Cook’s Info, http://www.cooksinfo.com/date-squares, this name is no longer used outside of Western Canada. In doing some research I’ve found a number of sources and comments that this name was given because the cake is “rough on the top with a sweet filling and a solid base”.

So, getting back to my grandmother’s recipe. As I said, she had to make do a lot in her cooking and dates were something she had to buy. This would have been difficult, I should imagine, during the Depression so women, like my grandmother, used whatever they had at hand to feed their families and add variety to their tables. Many Depression-era recipes utilize rhubarb in place of other fruits or in addition to other fruits (just Google cooking with rhubarb in the depression and you’ll find a host of recipes, http://community.tasteofhome.com/community_forums/f/30/t/8458.aspx). Rhubarb, as anyone knows who has a plant or two, grows like a weed and is virtually impossible to kill. It’s also one of the first things to grow in the spring. With an abundance of rhubarb to use and a husband who liked his desserts, my grandmother (along with many other housewives at the time) let necessity be the mother of invention and came up with an alternate filling for her Matrimonial Cake. As it turned out, Grampa preferred the rhubarb so Grama kept making it that way. As a child, this was the only way I knew Matrimonial Cake. Sure, we might get a date square at the bakery but I never thought of it as the same thing. No, Matrimonial Cake was made with rhubarb…or so I thought. Imagine my surprise when I entered a country fair baking contest in the category of Matrimonial Cake and mine was the only one with a distinctly pink filling! I wanted to cover my plate and quietly walk away but hubby said mine looked better than the others even if they had a different filling and what did I have to lose. It turns out he was right. I won the section and was asked to include my recipe in the fair’s recipe book, so much for thinking I’d made a fool of myself.

Yes, my grandmother’s Matrimonial Cake is my favourite recipe. Think I’ll have to make a batch for Thanksgiving.