Presenting a classic pound cake made moist with sour cream and prepared vintage-style in loaf pans — born from a 19th Century women’s movement established to help women in need.

You can bake this cake in a big bundt pan for a crowd or follow our lead and bake 2 cakes in loaf pans. That way, you can keep one and freeze one. Besides treating your friends and family to an old-fashioned cake, you can put on a pot of coffee, defrost your frozen “extra” cake and you’ll be ready whenever company comes calling. 🙂

This is not a frosted layer cake. It’s more the kind of sweet buttery cake you order in thick slices with a tall cappuccino in the morning. The type of cake that needs no frosting (unless you drizzle the top with a light lemon glaze). I prefer to serve it straight up with coffee, tea or lemonade! haha! All you need to add is great conversation with a neighbor or your best bud — and you’ve got yourself a Friendship Cake. This cake travels well and also makes a perfect side kick at a Sunday Brunch or any social gathering where cake and coffee are the go-together duo.

Vintage Cookbook Find: The recipe for this pound cake hails from the “Woman’s Exchange: Let’s Exchange Recipes, Volume I”, a simple spiral-bound cook book of shared recipes from the Woman’s Exchange of St. Augustine, Florida (founded in 1892). The Foreward by Lucy Lewis Deerin states that proceeds from this book will be used for the preservation and maintenance of the Dr. Peck House (now known as the Peña-Peck House) that dates back to 1702. This little cookbook also contains recipes contributed by Mr. Norman Baskin of his wife’s (Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of “The Yearling” and “Cross Creek” from her Cross Creek Cookery cookbook).

Women Helping Women to Help Themselves: The Woman’s Exchange Movement began in the early 1800’s as an amazing gathering of volunteer women committed to helping women who had fallen on hard times. This was accomplished with a unique retail service. The woman in need would create an amazing hand crafted item and deliver it to a local “Exchange” shop where the item would be placed for consignment sale. The shelves of these shops were lined with: Intricate embroidery, frocks, petticoats and gorgeous needlework (often called “fancywork”). A small portion of the profits (originally 6%) went to operational expenses, with the remainder going to the contributing artist.

Under Cover of Darkness: In the early days of these organizations, women delivered their special crafts to the back doors of the Exchange shops in secrecy under the cloak of darkness. Even payments to contributing women were delivered in underground fashion. Hiding the identity of contributors was considered a key component of the program. Why? Amazingly, this was done to protect the reputation of the participating women at a time when it was considered undignified for a woman to be earning a wage.

Practical Helping and Raising Awareness: The Industrial Revolution was running strong between 1800 and 1880. In 1832, the Philadelphia Ladies’ Depository (the nation’s first Exchange) was founded by wealthy widow, Elizabeth Stott. She and her friends opened a small charity shop to assist women who were trying to break free from the brutal industrial era working environment during the time of the 50-cents-a-day wage and the 14-hour workday. Members of the charity paid dues and acted as shop managers and accountants. Exchanges raised public awareness of the harsh working conditions and exploitation of working women, especially in the needlework trades, and they helped train women for the business world (for example, in retail sales, real estate lease transactions and bookkeeping).

The Exchanges blossomed during the civil war era (during a time when women were in factories stitching war uniforms). By 1891, more than 16,000 women sold merchandise at Exchanges across the country. For additional reading, you may want to check out: “The Business of Charity: The Woman’s Exchange Movement, 1832-1900” by Kathleen Waters Sander (author of “Mary Elizabeth Garrett: Society and Philanthropy in the Gilded Age“).

Many of these historic charitable organizations, such as the Scarsdale Woman’s Exchange and the St. Augustine Woman’s Exchange are still going strong today as part of the Federation of Woman’s Exchange organizations.

One thing’s for sure…the Woman’s Exchange recipe books still survive in used book stores everywhere. Even a handful of them on your cook book shelf would make a charming addition to your collection. These pamphlets and full-on cookbooks are from all parts of the country spanning decades of women helping women. But their latest cookbooks hot off the presses benefit great causes.

So here’s a salute to the history of the Woman’s Exchange! A truly remarkable group helping for decades to bring women forward.

Slow Food Alert! Although this is an easy cake recipe, the cake bakes slowly in a low temperature oven, so plan on: 1) ratcheting up your favorite kick-it tunes while you prep the cake then just kick back and wait for the cake aroma to start filling up the house during the slow-bake time.

Note About the Pans and Baking Time: We changed the type of pan used in the original recipe to 2 medium bread pans from a classic fluted bundt pan, just for fun. We also lengthened the baking time (beyond 1 hour) and raised the oven temperature up from 250 degrees (thinking that was a typo).

Okay, it’s time to clear the decks in my kitchen and get this cake party started! 😀

Collecting Ingredients on the Counter: This cake is practically baked once you have gathered your ingredients. Ever notice how that happens? Like, collect up the ingredients on the counter and then it’s nearly a done deal and you can just fly through it. 😀

So this is what I recommend for you…Have all your baking goodies lined up on the counter and ready to rock! 😀

Recipe Note about Lemons: We wanted to follow the original recipe as closely as possible so we used lemon extract instead of fresh lemons and the flavor was nice (although you can always kick up the lemon flavor a tad with a little scrub of very fine grated lemon peel and a dash of fresh lemon juice).

A note about sour cream: Because we want a nice moist cake, it is important to use a nice quality sour cream that is not reduced in fat.

Tools for Sour Cream Pound Cake:
2 small bread pans (approximately 8.5 x 4.5 x 2.5″, substitute 9-1/2″ diameter bundt pan or tube pan)
1 Large mixing bowl (for main batter)
1 medium bowl (for pre-mixing dry ingredients)
1 small bowl (for fork-beating eggs)
Electric mixer
Spatula
Measuring cups and spoons
Baking thermometer is recommended for this recipe but not mandatory

Sour Cream Pound Cake Ingredients:
6 large eggs
1 cup (2 cubes) butter
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1-1/4 cups superfine sugar
1 cup (1/2 pint) sour cream
1 teaspoon lemon extract (substitute 1 teaspoon of fresh lemon juice + 1/2 teaspoon fine grated fresh lemon peel)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract, fine quality

Let’s Bake Some Vintage Cake!:

Prepare 2 medium-sized bread pans by lining them with foil (for easy removal). This also works well when you’re using old vintage pans (to line over any “historical imperfections”).

Spray the foil with cooking spray (or brush a light coating of melted butter on them).

Set out to come to room temperature (perhaps 15 to 20 minutes) :
6 large eggs

Bring to room temperature in the microwave for a few seconds:
1 cup (2 cubes) butter

Add in and beat on high until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes):
1-1/4 cups superfine sugar

In a soup-sized bowl, fork beat until well blended:
the room temperature eggs

Beat into the creamed butter-sugar:
the mixed eggs

In a medium bowl, whisk until fully blended and set aside:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

We’re using Grandma’s tiny demitasse spoon as a quarter teaspoon… 🙂

We used a wide-mouthed jar to whisk the dry ingredients…

Mix well with the whisk — since we’re not sifting things together (it’s a lazy thing)…

Beat in on low-speed, increasing to medium speed, until just fully blended:
the prepared dry ingredients

Add to the batter the star ingredient:
1 cup sour cream

Beat in until fully incorporated:
1 teaspoon lemon extract
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract, fine quality

Divide the batter between the 2 bread pans (or all into one bundt pan).

The batter will be quite thick…

Be sure to smooth the batter in the pans…

The art of smoothing the batter (different strokes for different folks)… 🙂

Bake at 325 for 1-1/2 hours to an internal temperature of 210.
Tip: Because these are thick and somewhat dense cakes, it is very important to be certain this cake is fully cooked to prevent any streaks of dough. This is why I recommend a temperature tool — since the outer cake can be quite deceptive on doneness.

Let the cake cool just a bit before serving warm from the oven or keep them wrapped on the counter up to perhaps 3 days.

If you’re freezing one for company or a later event, let the cake cool thoroughly (perhaps 1 hour) and wrap well (I used double plastic wrap).

And there you have it. Freshly crafted from your kitchen and loaded with history!

Thank you for joining me for a little slice of cake history and our salute to the Woman’s Exchange groups across the country, helping so many thousands of women to a better life.

I hope you’ll join us on Facebook, where we share photos of our old-fashioned cake recipes in the testing stages and receive your tips and recommendations for future vintage cakes.

Leslie

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