Catholic Recipe: Easter Spice Ring

In talking to mothers of large families, one frequently hears the complaint that feast day cooking is not done in large families because the ingredients are frequently so expensive. One feast day recipe which does not fall into that class is the Easter Spice Ring. Baked in a tube pan, the cake serves as a holder for a Lumen Christi candle in the kitchen and keeps surprisingly well and fresh until the end of Easter week.

Easter bread and Easter cake is baked in traditional ring molds and symbolizes eternity which has neither beginning nor end.

DIRECTIONS

Cream shortening and sugar. Stir soda into soup. Sift flour and spices and add to the mixture the creamed shortening and sugar. Stir well. Then add soup, with soda and raisins. Mix well. Bake in a tube pan at 325° for 35 minutes. Remove from pan and allow to cool.

Frosting: Cream butter, add salt, a little sugar and work together well. Add sugar and orange concentrate alternately in small portions mixing thoroughly until icing spreads easily.

When icing has set, arrange cake on a platter and insert into the hole in center a candle which has been melted slightly at the base to help it to stand.