Daily Archives: October 31, 2025

Foodie Friday: Liver Spoon Cakes

Leave a reply

It wouldn’t be the Spooky Season without an equal mix of tricks and treats. In that spirit (pun very much intended), for Taste of the ‘Chives this year I chose the September 1945 recipe from our Rationing Calendar: Liver Spoon Cakes. I’ve always enjoyed offal – what’s not to like about menudo, especially in the fall and winter months? – and thought this recipe had the potential to be unexpectedly tasty. TLDR: I was mostly wrong.

Liver Spoon Cakes

1 pound sliced liver
Warm water
2 tablespoons milk
1 onion
2 eggs
6 crackers*
¼ cup lard or bacon drippings
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt

Simmer liver in water for 5 minutes; drain. Put through food chopper with onion and crackers. Add seasonings, milk, and beaten egg. Mix thoroughly. Drop by tablespoonfuls into hot drippings. Brown on one side. Turn and brown on second side until crisp.
*We used Ritz, but Saltines would work. Both were available and widely sold in 1945 (we checked).

Reggie, our Quality Control Manager, stood ready (above) to taste most parts of the recipe to ensure freshness. While he refused to try the onions, he was very excited about the livers (below).

The recipe doesn’t call for garnishes of any kind, though it does suggest buttered noodles with mushrooms, green beans, and coleslaw to round out the plate. Basil leaf added for a bit of color (see finished product below).

Surprisingly, my Mom liked the finished product more than I did, though serving the cakes on a Ritz cracker did wonders for me. I can’t say I’d recommend making this recipe, but if you really enjoy the smell, flavor, and texture of liver, and want to give it a try, we made the following adjustments:

  • We cooked just half a recipe; even so we ended up with so much extra cake “batter.” If you made these as hors d’oeuvres, I would recommend a quarter recipe for 4-6 people. Also, be ready to air out your house before your guests arrive (the smell is truly awful).
  • We also added more crackers; for a half recipe, we ended up using a half sleeve of Ritz crackers (8-10). The batter just didn’t seem thick enough to hold together otherwise. Part of the problem could be the use of a food processor versus a “food chopper.” If the ingredients had been more roughly chopped, the batter may have been closer to meatball consistency (as opposed to pancake batter).
  • These cakes were likely eaten with a bite of noodles or green beans, not alone. If you decide to make them as hors d’oeuvres, consider putting them on crackers and topping with a small dollop of sour cream or creme fraiche and chives.

Overall, I’d give this recipe a two-and-a-half stars out of a possible five – despite the smell, it managed to be edible. When the chefs were polled, however, the decision was unanimous: it’s not worth making again. Our QC Manager abstained out of a conflict of interest.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Foodie Fridays: Spiced Waffles!

Leave a reply

The recipe below is derived from a 1945 wall calendar from Portland’s own First Federal Savings Bank that featured scads of recipes from their “Cooking Club.” We prepared some of these for our 2015 “Taste of the ‘Chives” recipe showcase and at that time, I opted to prepare Bombay Salad for our public sampling event (requiring that I secure and a break open a fresh coconut-a first for me!). This time, I went for a less adventuresome route and decided to make the spiced waffle recipe.   

                                                                      Spiced Waffles

2.5 cups of cake flour                                                       3 eggs
3 teaspoons of baking powder                                     3 tablespoons of sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon                                                      3 tablespoons of butter/oil
.5 teaspoon cloves                                                            1.5 cups of milk
.5 teaspoon salt

Sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and salt. Beat the egg-yolks
and add sugar and the butter or oil. Add milk and dry ingredients alternately to the egg-yolk mixture and fold in the egg-whites, beaten stiff. Measure the batter in a deep ladle or shallow cup. Pour on sections of well-greased waffle iron and bake approximately 20 seconds on the first side; turn and bake 40 seconds on the other side.

Pretty straightforward, though the egg yolk separation threw me a bit as this is something I’ve done maybe only once or twice before. But I managed the yolk situation well and got everything mixed just fine.  

I added a dash of allspice to the mix to provide a little more depth. Otherwise, I followed the recipe to the letter (or so I thought…….). After the waffle iron heated up,
I poured the mix and eventually formed maybe 14 waffles in total. And the easiest part was serving them up with maple syrup from Vermont and chowing down!

Tasty stuff, with a nice hint of spice. As my friend Susan and I devoured these, we both noticed that the consistency was a bit thick and not as fluffy as they could have been. Throughout the process, I had wondered about the separation of the egg yolks and whites, assuming that the whites were not to be used. Wrong! When I typed up the recipe for this post, I finally read the recipe thoroughly enough to understand that the whites were to be added after everything else was mixed (and not to be used to make an extra dish of scrambled eggs to accompany the waffles!) The waffles were still toothsome and worth making again, and hopefully will be even better next time when the recipe is faithfully followed!

Susan is planning to make these waffles this upcoming weekend to see how the inclusion of the egg whites changes the taste. Either way, I’m down to try them again!

Karl McCreary – OSU SCARC