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Fresh Sheet: Annual Sukiyaki Dinner on Saturday

By Adriana Janovich adrianaj@spokesman.com(509) 459-5446

Highland Park United Methodist Church is hosting its annual Sukiyaki Dinner on Saturday.

On the menu: senbei crackers, sushi and baked goods. Take-out orders are available.

The dinner runs from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday at the church, which was established as a Japanese mission church, at 611 S. Garfield St.

Call (509) 535-2687 for reservations or more information. On the Web: hp-spokane.org.

Korean cooking class

The Spokane-Jecheon Sister City Association will hold a Korean cooking demonstration and lunch May 7.

RSVP by May 4 to learn to make bulgogi (marinated beef), chapchae (sweet-potato noodle salad), kimchee and soybean sprouts. After the demonstration, participants will eat these entrees with rice.

The workshop meets from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, 316 E. 24th Ave. The cost is $20 per person or a maximum of $40 per family. Proceeds help support the association’s scholarship fund.

RSVP to spokanewees04@yahoo.com. For more information, call (509) 448-4311.

Poor Man’s Cake

Betty Purkett got this recipe from her mother who got it from her aunt sometime in the early 1930s.

Purkett was born in 1937, a year after her brother and in the middle of the Great Depression. During World War II, when rationing was being enforced and sugar was not readily available, her mother stopped putting sugar in her coffee. Instead, every time she had a cup of coffee she put a spoonful of sugar in another cup. When she had a cup of sugar she made this cake for her two children. There wasn’t enough sugar for frosting.

“Instead, we ate the warm cake in slices with homemade butter spread on it,” Purkett said. “So yummy. Even now my mouth waters when I think of it and my wonderful, loving, kind, resourceful mother.”

Here’s the recipe:

1 cup raisins

1 ½ cups water, divided

1 tablespoon fat

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons cocoa

1 tablespoon spices (cloves, cinnamon, allspice)

1 teaspoon baking soda

In a flat bottom pan, place raisins and 1 cup water. Cook for 15 minutes. Add fat while raisins are hot.

Mix and sift flour, sugar, cocoa and spices.

Mix together remaining water and soda. Add alternately with dry ingredients to raisins.

Bake in a 9-by-9-inch pan at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.