Eggs were so scarce during WW2 that many recipes were modified to adapt to rationing. Many cake recipes were created that were perfectly acceptable without eggs and this chocolate sponge was one of them. I made it today, also using a wartime recipe for a chocolate filling which I used to sandwich the sponge together and glaze the top.

The filling is very much like dark chocolate and had I not been re-creating an authentic wartime recipe, some orange oil/essence and some orange zest would have really worked well in the filling and topping.

As it stood it was a nice, tasty, moist cake despite not having a big rise on it. For modern tastes it would be really nice served with cream or a raspberry coulis.

Eggless Chocolate Sponge with Dark Chocolate Filling

Ingredients

1/2 lb self raising flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
3 oz caster sugar
1 tablespoon syrup
14 tablespoons of hot water
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
3 oz margarine
Vanilla essence

Method

* Mix the flour, salt. cocoa and sugar together.
* Dissolve the syrup in the water and add the bicarbonate of soda.
* Melt the margarine and mix all the ingredients together including the essence but do not beat the mixture which should be very soft.
* Divide the mixture between to well greased 8″ sandwich tins and bake in a moderately hot oven for 20 minutes.
* When cooled use jam or a chocolate or mock cream filling between the two layers.

Chocolate Filling

1/2 oz margarine
2 oz cocoa
2 oz caster sugar
2 tablespoons of strong black coffee

Melt the margarine. Remove from the heat and add the cocoa and sugar. Beat in the coffee until the mixture becomes a good spreading consistency.