How to cook from your pantry when you don’t want to grocery shop or need to wait for your next check.

Chocolate Snack Cake

A great from the Great Depression, excellent for those experiencing their own small recession, be it financial (the ingredients are very affordable and are standard pantry ingredients) or merely physical (great for when you have an urge for snack cake.) Great as is but this snack cake ices well; great with milk and ice cream, but also great for those who cannot have dairy or eggs, too, as this recipe is free from both.

12⁄3 cup flour (see instructions below)

1 cup sugar

1⁄4 brown sugar

1⁄2 cup cocoa

dash salt

11⁄4 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1⁄3 cup vegetable oil plus 1 tablespoon

1 cup cold coffee

brown sugar

Stir flour and fluff it with a fork before measuring. This keeps the texture light and usually means you use slightly less flour. Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl and fluff them too with a fork.

Combine all the wet ingredients and mix them thoroughly and quickly.

Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients in. Stir until just combined, don’t over-stir. Some say just stir for 20 seconds.

Pour into a lightly greased and sugared pan of about 9 inches, square or round.

Sprinkle the top with brown sugar. Bake at 350- degrees F for about 30 minutes. Start checking for doneness at 25 minutes: a skewer thrust through the middle should come out with moist crumbs. Do not over-bake. Great hot with milk. Also delicious cold.

Snack cake icing

2 cups powdered sugar

warm water, 2 tablespoons or as needed

1⁄4 cup cocoa

Optional: splash of vanilla, if affordable, or mint, coffee, red pepper, cinnamon, etc., let your imagination and spice rack go wild.

Stir together until light and lumpless. Can be like a glaze, with more water, or fluffier, with less water and more beating. Let the cake cool as much as you can before people just start cutting themselves pieces, then ice the cake quickly. The icing melts less if the cake is cooler.

Tall Baking Powder Biscuits

Makes about a dozen tall biscuits.

3 cups flour, stirred before measuring

3⁄4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon baking powder

pinch cream of tartar

pinch turmeric

pinch baking soda

3 tablespoon s sugar

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 egg in a cup, filled up the rest of the way with vegetable oil

1 cup water

Preheat oven to 425- degrees F.

Stir together dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Combine egg, oil and water.

Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients.

Stir until just combined, do not over-stir at all as this creates toughness. Knead very lightly for 5 seconds. Roll out dough to about 1⁄4 inch and then fold the dough twice so it is 3⁄4 inch thick everywhere. Use a biscuit cutter or a glass to cut out biscuits about 21⁄2 inches across.

Lightly grease a cookie sheet or glass pie pan and lay out the biscuits, either touching for softer sides, or about 1 inch apart. Bake for about 18 minutes, when they are browned outside and soft inside. Start checking for doneness at 14 minutes.

Eat hot if possible. Great with butter and/or jam, sausage or plain gravy. Great as a sandwich or for breakfast, especially as a breakfast sandwich, or for dinner.

Rice with soup

Make soup and cook rice in it, about the normal amount of rice to fluid, but instead of using water, use rehydrated soup. Check your package of rice for instructions, because although rice often is cooked in a 1:3 or 1:2 ratio with water, sometimes the way rice is processed or the type of rice changes the ratio. Cream of chicken is great with rice, it has almost a risotto flavor to it, and tomato soup is good with rice also, particularly if you use Mexican spices like red pepper and cumin.

Per person, of cooked rice, try 1⁄4 to 1⁄2 cup rice as a side; or with a salad, as a very light dinner, 1 or 2 cups of cooked rice. Use low sodium or homemade soup if you wish, although canned soup is fine too. Homemade chicken broth with leftover pieces of chicken made this way with rice is particularly nice. Try to find homemade-like soup if you are using cans.

Fast Donut holes

Faster than the drive-through. Homemade plain cake-style.

13⁄4 cup flour, sifted

1⁄3 cup sugar plus 1 tablespoon

31⁄2 tablespoons oil

1⁄2 teaspoon vanilla

1⁄2 cup water or milk

1 teaspoon vinegar

pinch cardamom, if you have it

oil

Combine ingredients in a large bowl and stir until just combined.

Roll into 1 inch balls.

Heat about 1 inch of oil in a cast iron pan until bubbling and then carefully put the donuts into the very hot oil. Cook for a couple of minutes, turn in the middle of that time. Cut one open to make sure the donut hole is cooked in the middle. Let drain on a paper bag.

Roll in powdered sugar or granulated sugar with cinnamon or plain.

Eat hot.

— Mel Baker is an experienced chef, caterer and cafe manager. She resides in York County and has published “The Noisy Oven” since 2006. Email her a [email protected].