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You are viewing an archived event from a previous year.

Culture Days will return September 20 – October 13, 2024.

  • Hilda Lee's 1910 recipe for Winona Nut Cake, written at her family home, "Edgemount" (now the Erland Lee Museum Home).
  • The curator's recreation of Hilda Lee's Winona Nut Cake, as seen in the video guide.
  • A museum volunteer poses as if she has just removed her cake from the 1860s cast-iron kitchen stove .

Erland Lee Museum Home Recipe Challenge

Digital

Culinary & food History & heritage Museum
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Date and time

This activity runs the duration of Culture Days.

Location

Erland Lee Museum Home

Stoney Creek, ON

Directions: Located along Ridge Road in Stoney Creek, between the New Mountain and Dewitt mountain accesses.

Access

Free.

Offered in English.

Offers closed captioning or subtitles and offers audio description.

This activity is experienced virtually & remotely

About

Have you ever wanted to try your hand at a Victorian recipe?

Here's your chance!

Join Curator Mara as she experiments with Hilda Lee’s Winona Nut Cake. Share your results with us via social media (tag @erlandleemuseum and @onculturedays) or email ([email protected]). The brief instructions for this dessert left by Hilda can be found below.

Hilda Lee, daughter of Erland & Janet Lee, was born at the Erland Lee Museum Home, then called Edgemount, in 1892. She was a teacher in Hamilton, Ontario then later a nurse in New York State. This recipe for Winona Nut Cake was hand written by Hilda Lee when she was 18 years old and is now part of the Erland Lee Museum’s Permanent Collection.

"Edgemount, Mar. 3, 1910

Winona Nut-Cake

2 cups sugar

1 cup butter

3 cups flour

1 cup cold water

4 eggs

3 tsp B. P. [baking powder]

1 ½ cups chopped walnuts or almonds

Bake ¾ to 1 hour in a large shallow pan"

Links

Organizer

Erland Lee Museum Home

The Erland Lee Museum Home is a National Historic Site of Canada and home of the world's first Women's Institutes branch. Built in 1808 as a simple log cabin, the building was renovated over the years and owned by the Lee family until 1972.

In 1972, the Federated Women's Institutes of Ontario (FWIO) purchased the Lee family home. FWIO wanted to preserve the vintage home as a memorial to the birthplace of the Women's Institutes (WI), and feature the vanished, middle-class, rural Victorian lifestyle. It opened as the Erland Lee Museum the same year, with the exterior and the 1873 additions restored to their 1897 beauty.

The Erland Lee Museum Home strives to serve its community through family-friendly events & programs and through educational and entertaining workshops through the year. We are regularly open January through December for guided tours of the home and self-guided tours of the 1873 Carriage House and grounds.

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