Spanish Bar Cake
Would you like to save this recipe?
We'll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!
Send this recipe to my email.
Spanish Bar Cake. A real old fashioned treat! A supermarket favourite from years ago, this simple raisin spice cake is easy to make, moist and utterly delicious.
Originally published December 2018.
A few weeks ago, I got a request from a reader for a recipe for Spanish Bar Cake. I had never heard of it before.
She explained that it was a cake made by a supermarket bakery that she loved many years ago. I set off to do a little research on this cake.
Spanish Bar Cake was a very simple bar shaped raisin spice cake with an unfussy vanilla frosting. Being a fan of old time recipes, I certainly became quite interested in finding a recipe.
Turns out this cake was made by Jane Parker Bakery and sold through the A&P supermarket chain in the US & Canada. The reader who sent me the request grew up in Ottawa.
I have since heard that it was available in Toronto when a friend was growing up there 20 or so years ago.
There were a few recipes I found on a few websites but none of them definitively said they were the original recipe.
I finally came across an old entry in an online food forum which claimed to have been gotten from Jane Parker Bakery.
The recipe was written for two 9x13 pans. Those two layers would have been frosted and stacked, then cut down the middle to produce 2 bar cakes.
What the Spanish inference relates to is completely lost on me, except if that's where the raisins came from.
Spanish Bar Cake, the result.
I cannot say with any certainty that this was the original recipe. The reader who tried it called it a "very good raisin spice cake" but not quite the flavour she remembered.
Memory is a funny thing though. We sometimes like to imagine things better than they actually were.
Then again, with such a widespread production of this cake, there may have been subtle differences in the recipe used regionally.
She noted that a tablespoon of cocoa, which some recipes add, would make it the darker colour she remembered. She also said the flavour was not so intense as she remembered.
The intenseness of flavour in this recipe would really have to come from the spices. My suggestion would be to add 1 tablespoon of cocoa to the dry ingredients and to up the amount of spices by half, if you want a more deeply flavoured cake.
So, for my taste, and Spouse's, who loves spice cake, this was a really delicious, easy to make cake.
We brought it to a friends house for dinner and it got rave reviews. Next time I will try it with the adjustments I mentioned, but I would be more than content to enjoy it again, just as we made it.
Looking for more holiday baking inspiration?
If you love old fashioned cake recipes you may want to check out this collection with some everyday recipes like Cherry Pound Cake too. Favourite Newfoundland Christmas Cakes here.
Like this Spanish Bar Cake recipe?
You'll find hundreds of other sweet ideas in our Cakes & Pies Category and even more in our Desserts Category.
It's easy to keep up with the latest home style cooking & baking ideas from Rock Recipes. Be sure to follow Rock Recipes Facebook Page and follow us on Instagram. Plus you'll see daily recipe suggestions from decadent desserts to quick delicious weekday meals too.
You can also sign up for our FREE newsletter to know immediately when we add new recipes. You'll also get weekly suggestions for great family friendly meals and desserts too!
Rock Recipes a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Our product recommendations are almost exclusively for those we currently use or have used in the past.
Spanish Bar Cake
Spanish Bar Cake. A real old fashioned treat! A supermarket favourite from years ago, this simple raisin spice cake is easy to make, moist and utterly delicious.
Ingredients
- 2 cups water
- 1 cups raisins
- ½ cup vegetable shortening, or butter
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoons baking soda
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon ground cloves
- ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon ground allspice
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 large egg, beaten
- ½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans, (optional)
For the Frosting
- 2 ¼ cups icing sugar
- ¼ cup butter, at room temperature
- ½ teaspoon pure vanilla
- 1 to 2 tablespoons milk, more if needed
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 9x13 baking pan and line it with parchment paper.
- Add the water and raisins to a saucepan. Bring to a gentle boil and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Add the shortening to the boiled mixture. Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature.
- Sift together the sugar, soda, flour, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and salt.
- Add the sifted ingredients to the cooled raisin mixture, along with the beaten egg and the nuts, if you are adding them.
- Fold gently until the flour is just incorporated into the batter. Do not over mix.
- Pour the batter evenly into the prepared pan and Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.
- Cool completely and ice with frosting if you like
To prepare the frosting
- Beat together the icing sugar, butter, vanilla and a tablespoon of milk until smooth.
- If necessary, add more milk until the frosting is a good spreadable consistency.
- Cut the cake in half, frost the first layer then top with the second layer and frost again. To get the characteristic lines on top, run the back of a fork over the top frosting in straight lines.
- This recipe also makes about a dozen cupcakes if you prefer.
Notes
The nutritional information provided is automatically calculated by third party software and is meant as a guideline only. Exact accuracy is not guaranteed. For recipes where all ingredients may not be used entirely, such as those with coatings on meats, or with sauces or dressings for example, calorie & nutritional values per serving will likely be somewhat lower than indicated.
Recommended Products
Rock Recipes a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Our product recommendations are almost exclusively for those we currently use or have used in the past.
Nutrition Information
Yield
12Serving Size
1 slice (1/12 of the cake)Amount Per Serving Calories 346Saturated Fat 2gCholesterol 13mgSodium 201mgCarbohydrates 64gFiber 1gSugar 38gProtein 2g
Nickels Bakery in Navarre, Ohio used to make Spanish Bar Cake. My dad and I loved it.
My mom made a similar bar cake called Tomato Soup Cake, and yes, a can of Campbell's Tomato Soup was a main ingredient along with raisins and spices. It tasted just like the Spanish Bar cake from Loblaws in Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada.
My husband always loved Spanish Bar Cake & would get it from A & P. Last wk I saw someone eating it & decided to try & find the recipe. I made it & he said it was delicious & just the way that he remembered it!
I was searching for this recipe online this morning and was so delighted to find it!
Oh my gosh! Spanish Bar Cake from A&P grocery store was my one of my favorite things to eat. Probably because my Dad always ate it. I can’t wait to try this recipe!!!
My parents always bought Spanish bar cake, we would slice it up and put it on a sandwich, it was so good
I grew up in Toronto and my mom bought a couple of Spanish bar cakes every week so we could have a slice of the cake in our lunches everyday. My dad especially enjoyed it. Was so moist and tasty. Can't wait to try this recipe.
I worked for many years in grocery store bakeries. Spanish Bar Cakes were a way to use up old bakery products. We'd use "X" number of pounds of old donuts, cakes with the icing scraped off, etc. Then add other stuff to it. I don't have the recipe with me, as I only used it at the store.
I am wondering if you remember the coconut cream pies we use to get at the Chinese restaurants in St. John's? Do you know what ingredients they used to make them? We
use to think they were so good.
Was just thinking about how much I loved Spanish bar cake as a kid and wondered why it isn't still popular in stores
In WV when we were first married in 77 our local market carried Spanish bar cakes. My husband’s favorite special treat. Sad they quit selling it, but Im definitely gonna surprise him with this recipe. Thanks
I recall that Spanish Bar Cake from A&P had a lot of heavy vanilla icing. I used to scrap it off and lay aside to eat last and my mother didn't like that as she suddenly realised how much sugar there was. That was in the 60s and I loved it!
Spanish bar cake had a heavy dose of molasses that gave it its black color. We bought ours in West Virginia when my dad was from every time he went home he would buy to eat and one to take home with us my mother is from the south where they use a lot of sorghum and molasses and she definitely tasted pecans in it but I never saw any but they had to have been very well ground up. They were definitely not chunks of pecan.
Went into Aspire Bakeries/ Oak Farm Run Bakeries in Ancaster, they have a small retail store there at the factory.
I was looking for their Spanish bar cake for my girlfriend's birthday. They told me that they haven't been making it for a few years now.
I told them that she had a recipe for it and it's quite good but it didn't seem right to have her bake her own cake for her birthday.
They said next time you're in, bring a copy of the recipe and we'll let everyone know because they always ask about the Spanish Bar Cake.
I said I can give you the recipe now, look up rockrecipes.com Spanish bar cake 😊
I'm going to try this Spanish bar cake. Looks yummy. I miss not seeing them in stores.
I have looked high and low for someplace that sells Spanish Bar cakes. My dad bought them when I was a kid. I was thrilled to find this recipe! I made it once and doubled the spices and added the Tblsp. of cocoa. I LOVED it and so did my siblings! This recipe is a keeper! In fact, I am making another one right now!