Pound Cake in Victorian America

Pound Cake in Victorian America

Today, March 4, is National Pound Cake Day ~ a perfect day to celebrate Pound Cake in Victorian America.

What is pound cake? What is it made of? Why was it a popular cake with 19th century bakers?

Victorian Gingerbread Recipes

Victorian Gingerbread Recipes

“Gingerbread” may immediately cause visions of cookie-and-candy houses dripping with icicles made of brittle white icing, but gingerbread’s Victorian history is so much more than that. Perhaps this broader history is why the National Day Calendar says today, June 5, is National Gingerbread Day.

Victorian Oatmeal RAISIN Cookies

Victorian Oatmeal RAISIN Cookies

Near the year 1900, Victorian-American cooks finally started combining raisins (which they had plenty of uses for) and oatmeal–a grain they’d only recently begun accepting. This article contains several vintage recipes from nineteenth century newspapers: raisins in other late-Victorian recipes, and at last–chopped raisins IN oatmeal cookies.

Victorian Fare: Cookies

Victorian Fare: Cookies

Can you imagine baking cookies like a Victorian? Given many ingredients and measuring methods are unfamiliar to today’s cooks, I’ve shared brief info about those mystery ingredients and 19th-century measuring implements.

Historic Pie Recipes

Historic Pie Recipes

Vintage pie recipes, true to the pioneer and Victorian era experience, look a lot different than modern recipes. In this article, I share recipes from vintage newspapers and Prairie Farmer magazine (1841-1900). One includes “Pie Plant”, an ingredient I remember from the Little House on the Prairie series, but never knew what it actually was!