Recipe and blog referenced: https://www.pbs.org/food/kitchen-vignettes/groaning-cake-traditional-cake-new-mothers/
One of my biggest focuses, as I was preparing for birth, was preparing any food – meals and snacks – whatever I could, in an effort to make my life that much easier in the postpartum period.
One day, before heading into maternity leave, a client of mine asked if I was going to make a groaning cake.
I had never heard of this before so she shared a little bit about the history and tradition of groaning cakes and where I could find information on it.
I’m not super big on traditions, but it’s cake! I was intrigued.
She mentioned that there was an episode of Kitchen Vignettes shown on PBS, that was all about the cake.
Once the appointment ended, I went to Google and did some searching and found the exact recipe and vignettes episode on PBS. And I was excited, not just learn about it, but to plan to try it for myself.
Now, I’m NOT the kind of person to make cakes from scratch. In fact, I’m pretty sure this was the first cake from scratch that I’ve ever made; but it was so very worth it.
The day before I had my scheduled induction, I went ahead and made the cake and ended up slicing and freezing half the following day.
Once I got home from the hospital, the cake was wonderful to have for snacks that provided me with nourishment and satiety.
One of my favorite things about this spiced cake is that it’s sweet, but not too sweet. It’s sweet enough to where it provides energy and deliciousness, but not sweet enough to where I would feel a sugar rush if this was the only thing that I could grab in the morning.
I ended up making this cake again when I was about one month postpartum because of how delicious and wonderful it was.
Of course you don’t need to have any prenatal needs to have this cake. Anybody can eat this cake, anytime, but in my postpartum journey it’s been one of my favorite things, especially for those days where all I could do was just grab a slice from the freezer and let it sit for a couple of minutes before being good to go.
Have you ever heard of a groaning cake? Let me know in the comments. If you’ve heard of it, or have tried it before!