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Indian Griddle Cakes
2/3 quart corn meal, 1/3 quart flour, 1 teaspoonful brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoonful salt, 2 heaping teaspoonfuls baking-powder, 2 eggs, 1 pint milk. Sift together corn meal, flour, salt, sugar, and powder; add beaten eggs and milk; mix into a smooth batter. Bake on very hot griddle to a nice brown. Serve with molasses or maple syrup.
A cornmeal-heavy griddle batter measured by the quart rather than the cup, which is the only real obstacle to making it today.
- Converting the quart measuresA quart measure in the kitchen holds 4 cups, so 2/3 quart is about 2 2/3 cups cornmeal and 1/3 quart about 1 1/3 cups flour. That gives roughly 4 cups of dry mix to 1 pint (2 cups) milk and 2 eggs.
- "Indian" means cornIndian meal is simply cornmeal. Use a fine or medium yellow meal; coarse stone-ground meal will stay gritty in the short cooking time these cakes get.
- Let the batter standThe single thing that improves these most is 15 to 20 minutes of rest before cooking, which lets the cornmeal absorb liquid. Skip it and the cakes taste sandy and drink up syrup unevenly.
- Batter consistencyTwo cups of milk to four cups of dry mix is thick. Thin with additional milk until the batter falls from the spoon in a ribbon, or the cakes will be dense and the centres underdone.
- Baking powderTwo heaping old teaspoonfuls is close to a modern tablespoon, which is about right for this much dry mix. Modern double-acting powder means the batter can rest without losing all its lift.
- "Very hot griddle"About 375 to 400F on an electric griddle, or a heavy pan where a drop of water skitters rather than sits. High-cornmeal batters scorch faster than wheat pancakes, so watch the first cake and adjust down if needed.
- "Bake" on the griddleIn books of this period "bake" is used for griddle cooking as well as oven work. No oven is involved here.
- YieldRoughly 18 to 20 cakes of four inches, enough for four to six people.