Cider Cake is a simple coffee cake spiced with apple cider, brown sugar, cinnamon and cloves. This recipe is found in The Frugal Housewife’s Manual, which is the first cookbook compiled and published in the English language in Canada in 1840. I tested out this Cider Cake recipe when I was preparing for an Open Hearth Baking class that was to be taught at Nelles Manor Museum in Grimsby, Ontario in early April 2020. An interesting note is that The Frugal Housewife’s Manual was compiled by someone with the initials A. B., who lived in Grimsby, Ontario at the time. Conceivably, this A.B. and the Nelles family who lived at Nelles Manor would have been acquainted with each other since the both lived in the same small community.

This was one of the mid-1800s recipes that I would be preparing using Nelles Manor’s Open Hearth with the class participants using the Dutch Oven. Other open hearth baking recipes would have made by using other open hearth baking implements, such as cheese straws fried on the griddle, coconut macaroons in the reflector oven, and fritters fried on a trivet. Keep an eye out in this blog for a description of how I used the dutch oven to bake the Cider Cake, and future blog posts for how-tos for all the open hearth baking techniques I’ve mentioned.

Fresh Raspberry Water is a refreshing beverage with a zip. We made it at a historic cooking class that I taught last July at Nelles Manor Museum http://nellesmanor.ca/ and I remember that it was very satisfying to drink after cooking over an open hearth on a hot summer day.

It’s a simple recipe. Remove the raspberry seeds with a sieve, then add lemon juice, white sugar and water. I pulled this gem of a recipe from the 1790 cook book The Complete Confectioner by Frederick Nutt.

Strawberry-fritters is one of the recipes that we made at an open hearth cooking class that I taught at Nelles Manor Museum http://nellesmanor.ca/ last summer. This class featured scrumptious seasonal recipes made with garden produce and recipes from the late 1700s, when the home was newly built by the Nelles family.

I learned when I made Apple Frazes that adding a bit of alcohol to your batter is a good idea, so I made a batch for a socially distanced outdoor Canada Day gathering. They taste like fried strawberries and white wine and I liked them so much that I wanted to make the recipe again here on this blog and share it with all of you!

Carrot Fritters are very delicious, but they taste like oranges, not carrots. I think sneaky parents of picky eaters could blenderize the carrots very smoothly, call them Orange Pancakes and use this recipe to get some vegetables into their kids.

I made this recipe from the 1787 The Lady’s Assistant for Regulating and Supplying the Table at a recipe testing day at Nelles Manor Museum in Grimsby, Ontario. I’ll be teaching 3 open hearth cooking classes on July 28 & 30 at Nelles Manor and as of today, there are still tickets available for all three classes.

Baking Soda Bread is a shortcut to eating fresh baked bread when you’re short on time. You’ll be spreading butter on a warm bread slice in about an hour and a half!

This Soda Bread recipe, from the 1861 Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, is a favourite of mine because it produces a more moist and less dense soda bread than most recipes that I’ve tried. Soda bread doesn’t have the longevity of risen breads, so it will be toast (literally) sooner than later.

If a sweet scone and a cookie got married and had a baby, that baby would be Albany Cakes. However you classify Albany Cakes, this sweet bit of bakery with cinnamon and rose water flavours is deelish! This was another recipe that we made at the cooking classes that I taught this autumn at Nelles Manor Museum in Grimsby. Our Albany Cakes recipe comes from The Frugal Housewife's Manual, published in Toronto in 1840, but written by a mysterious resident of Grimsby who likely would have known the Nelles family.

Apple Frazes are a tasty apple pancake from the 18th-century classic: The art of cookery made plain and easy by Hannah Glasse. Through making this recipe, I've learned that adding little bit of sherry to your pancake batter is a very good idea!

I had the pleasure of frying my Apple Frazes over an open hearth built in the 1780s at Nelles Manor Museum (www.nellesmanor.ca), where I'll be teaching Open Hearth Cooking Classes. The September Classes have sold out, but we've added a third class on November 4^th at 1:00. At this class we'll be making the same Autumn recipes as the classes in September, only at the end of the Fall season rather than the beginning.