Hardtack Cake

This recipe comes from Gram’s family who lived down near Center Valley in Lehigh County. According to my great aunt (born in 1901), it was an old one handed down from home. They called it “hardtack,” but it doesn’t resemble the hardtack that we’re most familiar with — that cracker biscuit that was commonly given to soldiers during the Civil War.

Some places in Montgomery County sell hardtack cake, like Landis Supermarkets around Harleysville. I’ve not had those, so I’m unsure if they’re the same. At one time, the Goschenhoppen Historians’ (also in Montgomery county) website referred to apeas cakes as “sometimes called hardtack.”

Hardtack Cake

Apeas cakes are a much more famous breakfast cake — meant especially for dunking in your morning coffee. Apeas pops up as either cakes or cookies today and descend from anise-flavored cookies from the early 19th century. As they spread around the Pennsylvania Dutch country, they took on different flavors and ingredients. Vanilla seems to the most common type in Lehigh County. This recipe is certainly in the vanilla apeas family, but it has minimal ingredients. It’s dense, but tasty and certainly not stale and dry like hardtack. Anyway, here it is — enjoy with your morning brew!

4 cups flour
pinch salt
2 heaped teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
1 cup lard or vegetable shortening
¾ cup milk
vanilla to taste

Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Add the sugar and sift again. Cut in the lard and mix into crumbs like pie dough. Mix in milk and vanilla. Pat out into 2 greased pie plates. Sprinkle some sugar on top and bake until lightly brown (350 F for about 30-40 minutes).

Maternus, The Bullfrog Inn