Canned Fruit Cocktail

Hearing of my job loss, a friend brought over 7 large cardboard boxes of canned food.  I spent about 2 hours this morning sorting through all of the cans and organizing my basement area where I keep my food.

I am not LDS but I am very fiscally conservative and when I moved to Utah and learned about the LDS penchant for lots of food storage in case of an emergency, I decided it was not a bad idea for anyone.  My neighbor, the one who brought over all the food, has been hooking me up with all her bulk buying contacts.  So, I have accumulated quiet a bunch of stuff.  Some of it I will probably NEVER use unless I am very hungry.  I won't use the fake Beef chunks which really just taste like dog food.  Actually, I doubt that a dog would eat it, with all the nice smelling garbage that would become available in case of Armageddon.

Anyway, after sorting through all the food, I had about 25-30 cans of canned fruit.  I don't use canned fruit.  This seemed like something I could use and that my kids would like.

I like to collect the local cookbooks that community organization put out for fund raising.  I have cookbooks from churches, schools, farm bureaus, women's clubs, and our local ward (neighborhood).  The worst of these cookbooks (from my perspective) was put out by a school my children used to go to in Utah.  About half of the recipes from the main dish section called for cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soup and almost every recipe called for canned something or frozen something.  I was really expecting a lot better from the cooking in Utah since the culture is very family based, but I think the lack of fresh cooking has a lot to do with food storage.  If you have all this food stored, then obviously the plan is to use it.  My kids friends tell me I am a great cook, which is crazy because I am not a great cook compared to my mother.  But, my son tells me that the cooking at his friends house is not that great.

Anyway, I looked in the aforementioned cookbook because, I thought, if I want to use canned goods then this is the place to go.  I picked out the Fruit Cocktail Cake.   This cake is a very short batter, with brown sugar topping and then a syrup poured into the cake.  It is very, very, very rich.  This turns out to be more like a bread pudding or a custard than a cake.  I ate mine with milk like it was a strawberry short cake.  I have three boys and they only ate half of the cake in one sitting.  Normally they would have eaten the whole thing.  They said it was good but just couldn't eat it because it was too rich.  

Fruit Cocktail Cake
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix all of the ingredients below, together

1 Cup white sugar
1 1/4  cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 3/4 cup fruit cocktail with juice (= one regular size can)
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs

Pour batter in 9 x 13 inch pan.  It will not look as if there is enough batter.  You will wonder if this recipe should be doubled.  I thought so too, but it puffed up very well.

Spinke on top to cover the batter before cooking
1 cup brown sugar and optionally, sprinkle on chopped nuts

Bake for 18 - 30 minutes. test for doneness with knife or tooth pick.  I had to go more toward the high side.

Topping

Put in sauce pan
1 stick butter
3/4 cups white sugar
1 can evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Boil the topping for 5 minutes.  After removing the cooked cake from the oven, prick with a fork all over and pour the topping evenly over the cake.

Kitchen tip - if your brown sugar is hard, put it in the microwave and also put in the microwave (in a separate container) a cup of water.  Cook for 3 minutes at a time and let the brown sugar absorb the moisture from the air.  Periodically take out the brown sugar and mix and break up large chunks.