Baptist Cake
One quart flour, a piece of butter half the size of a hen's egg rubbed into the flour, a little salt, two spoons baking powder heaped, wet with milk so it can be easily rolled out; roll thin say one-fourth of an inch thick and cut into squares. Fry in lard as you do doughnuts, quickly as possible and have them well done.
A plain fried quick bread of the New England supper table — biscuit dough rolled thin and dropped into hot fat. The whole dish turns on frying temperature and on rolling thin enough that the centre cooks through.
- A quart of flourMeasured by volume, that is about 4 cups, or roughly 1 lb of all-purpose flour; scooped straight from the bin rather than spooned in, it will run somewhat heavier.
- Butter the size of half a hen's eggAbout 1 oz, or 2 tablespoons. Rub it in with the fingertips until the flour looks sandy, as for biscuits.
- Two heaped spoons of baking powderAmbiguous in the original: the spoon size is not stated, and the period's baking powders varied in strength. With modern double-acting powder, 4 teaspoons for 4 cups of flour is a sound proportion.
- The milkNo amount is given because it depends on the flour. Start with about 1½ cups and add until the dough just holds together and rolls without cracking — slightly softer than pie dough, drier than drop-biscuit batter.
- Fat and temperatureLard is still the traditional and best choice; any neutral frying fat works. Hold it at 365–375F. Below that the squares soak up grease before they puff; much above it and the outsides brown while the middle stays raw dough.
- Thin, and well doneThe quarter-inch thickness is not incidental. These puff considerably in the fat, and a thicker square will still be doughy inside when the crust has coloured. Cut squares of about 2 inches, fry perhaps 2 minutes, turning once, until deep gold on both sides.
- Yield and servingA quart of flour makes roughly three to four dozen squares, depending how they are cut. Serve them hot from the fat with maple syrup, molasses, or a dusting of sugar; they collapse and toughen as they cool.
Baptist cakes are a New England fried quick bread that also travelled under the names holy pokes and huff juffs. The name is generally traced, jokingly, to baptism by full immersion — the dough goes wholly under, in this case into the fat rather than the river. The recipe belongs to the era of chemical leavening, when baking powder had made it possible to put a hot bread on the table in twenty minutes without waiting on yeast, and when a kettle of lard was already standing by for doughnuts. It was eaten hot with syrup or molasses.