Home › Griddle Cakes › Geneva Griddle Cakes
Geneva Griddle Cakes
1 1/2 pints flour, 4 tablespoonfuls sugar, 1/2 teaspoonful salt, 1 1/2 teaspoonfuls baking-powder, 2 tablespoonfuls butter, 4 eggs, nearly 1/2 pint milk. Rub butter and sugar to white, light cream; add yolks of eggs, one at a time. Sift flour, salt, and powder together; add to butter, etc., with milk and egg whites whipped to dry froth; mix together into a smooth batter. Bake in small cakes; as soon as brown, turn and brown the other side. Have buttered baking-tin; fast as browned, lay them on it, and spread raspberry jam over them; then bake more, which lay on others already done. Repeat this until you have used jam twice, then bake another batch, which use to cover them. Sift sugar plentifully over them, place in a moderate oven to finish cooking.
This is not a stack of breakfast pancakes but a layered pancake cake: thin griddle cakes stacked with raspberry jam, dusted with sugar, and set in the oven to finish. Read the whole method before you start the batter, because the assembly happens while the griddle is still hot.
- Flour and milk by volumeA pint here is a liquid measure used for dry goods: 1 1/2 pints of flour is about 3 cups, and "nearly 1/2 pint" of milk is a scant cup. The word "nearly" suggests holding some milk back and adding it as needed; the batter should pour thickly rather than run.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as somewhere around 350F, though the recipe gives no temperature. The cakes are already cooked on the griddle, so the oven stage is to finish them through, melt the jam into the layers and set the sugar on top; it will not need long.
- Leavening1 1/2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder is modest for 3 cups of flour because the four whipped whites are doing most of the lifting. Fold them in last, in two additions, and cook the batter promptly; it will deflate if it stands.
- "Rub butter and sugar to white, light cream"Creaming two tablespoons of butter with four of sugar is easier if the butter is properly soft. This is a creamed batter, closer to a sponge than to a buttermilk pancake mix.
- Bake in small cakes"Bake" here simply means cook: the next line, "as soon as brown, turn and brown the other side," is griddle work. The recipe says only "small"; keep them of even size or the stack will not sit level. A lightly buttered griddle over medium heat gives the even browning the recipe assumes.
- The assemblyJam goes on twice, not on every layer, and the final batch of cakes is a plain lid. Spread the jam thinly while the cakes are hot so it softens and grips rather than sliding out under the weight.
- Buttered baking-tinBuild the stack directly on the tin you will bake it on; moving a warm jam-layered tower is how it collapses. A shallow round tin or an ovenproof plate works.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; 3 cups of flour and 4 eggs will make a generous quantity of small cakes, so expect one substantial stack, cut in wedges. Best served warm.