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Graham Griddle Cakes
1 pint Graham flour, 1/2 pint Indian corn meal, 1/2 pint flour, 1 heaping teaspoonful brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoonful salt, 2 teaspoonfuls baking-powder, 1 egg, 1/2 pint each of milk and water. Sift together Graham flour, corn meal, flour, sugar, salt, and powder. Add beaten egg, milk, and water. Mix together into a smooth batter. Heat griddle hot, pour batter into cakes as large as a tea saucer. Bake brown on one side, carefully turn and brown other side. Pile one on the other; serve very hot, with sugar, milk, cream, or maple syrup.
A plain three-grain pancake from the era when Graham flour was a health food and pints were the standard kitchen measure. The mixing is straightforward; the two things worth attention are the batter's thickness and the low proportion of leavening.
- Pints to cupsA pint is 2 cups. So: 2 cups Graham flour, 1 cup cornmeal, 1 cup white flour, and 1 cup each milk and water.
- Graham flourCoarsely ground whole wheat with the bran and germ left in. Modern stone-ground whole wheat flour is the closest match; ordinary whole wheat works but gives a finer, less nutty cake.
- Indian corn mealSimply cornmeal. Fine or medium yellow meal suits griddle cakes better than coarse polenta grind, which stays gritty in a batter cooked this quickly.
- Leavening runs lowTwo teaspoons of baking powder for four cups of dry mixture is on the low side by modern practice, which tends toward a teaspoon or more per cup; the single beaten egg supplies some additional lift. Expect fairly dense, flat cakes. Period baking powders were mostly single-acting, so the batter is best cooked soon after mixing.
- Thin the batter as neededTwo cups of liquid against four cups of dry ingredients gives a very stiff batter, and Graham flour and cornmeal both keep absorbing liquid as they sit. Add milk until it pours in a thick ribbon rather than dropping in lumps.
- Griddle heatThe recipe says only 'hot,' with no temperature given. In modern terms a medium-hot griddle, hot enough that a drop of water skitters, suits these cakes; a moderate steady heat is safer than a fierce one, since the bran and cornmeal can darken before the centre sets.
- Size and turningA tea saucer is roughly 5 inches across. Turn once, when the surface has lost its gloss and the edges look set; these cakes are heavy and do not tolerate flipping back and forth.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities should make somewhere around eighteen to twenty-four saucer-sized cakes, enough for four to six people. Hold them in a low oven rather than stacking on the counter if you are cooking in batches.