"In the recipes printed in the Woman's Exponent, a suffragist newspaper in Salt Lake City, the flour and butter were measured by the pound, not the cup. The recipes call for ingredients that are hard to come by today. They also don't specify cooking temperatures or time. "In the 1880s, most people in America were cooking with the old cast iron stove," said Juli McLoone, curator of the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive at the University of Michigan."
"Undaunted, we tried baking some kiss cakes from 1885. The result didn't have the pizazz of cookies with multicolored sprinkles and frosting, and they weren't nearly as sweet as the cookies we eat today. But they were cute. Cookies, cakes, pies and treats like these little kiss cakes were sold at bake sales around Salt Lake City and all over the West. The proceeds helped suffragists crisscross the country to make their case for women's rights."
Suffragists raised funds through bake sales and by compiling and selling cookbooks to support campaigning and travel. Baking activities strengthened ties among women while highlighting domestic roles as cooks and homemakers. Historic recipes often measured flour and butter by the pound and omitted precise temperatures and times because most cooks used wood- or coal-fired cast-iron stoves. Many ingredients listed then are uncommon today, making faithful recreation difficult. An attempt to bake 1885 kiss cakes produced modestly sweet, plain treats rather than modern frosted cookies, yet yielded charming results. Proceeds enabled cross-country travel for advocacy and cookbooks promoted mutual aid in housekeeping and childcare.
Read at www.npr.org
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]