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Flour Mixtures: Quick Breads: Sift
HOT APPLE TRIANGLES 2 cups of flour 1/3 cup of sweet milk 1/4 cup of sugar 1 apple, pared and cut in 3 level teaspoonfuls of baking eighths powder 1 or 2 tablespoonful sugar 1/4 teaspoonful of salt 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon 1/4 cup of butter 1 tablespoonful of cleaned cur 2 tart apples in small pieces rants 1 egg Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt; with the tips of the fingers work in the butter and add the pieces of apple. Beat the egg; add the milk and use to mix the dry ingredients to a dough. A little more milk may be needed. Spread the dough, with a spoon, in a round pan. Press the eighths of apple into the dough at equal distances apart, dredge the top with the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over the currants. Bake in a hot oven. Serve, cut in triangles, with butter for luncheon or supper.
BLUEBERRY TEA CAKE OR MUFFINS 2 cups of sifted pastry flour 1/2 cup of milk 4 level teaspoonfuls of baking 2 tablespoonfuls of melted but- powder ter 1 cup of sugar 1 cup of blueberries dredged 1/2 teaspoonful of salt with a little flour 1 egg, beaten light Sift together the dry ingredients and mix with the egg and milk; beat in the butter and the berries. Bake in a sheet or in a muffin pan. This recipe may be easily halved. Use either the white or the yolk of the egg. Cooking for Two CEREAL GRIDDLE CAKES 1/2 cup of ready-to-eat cereal, 1/4 cup of sweet milk as Egg-O-See, Granose 1/2 cup of sifted flour flakes, etc. 1 level teaspoonful of baking 1/2 cup of thick sour cream powder 1/8 teaspoonful of soda White of 1 egg Yolk of 1 egg, beaten Slice of salt pork, to oil the 1/4 teaspoonful of salt griddle Mash and sift the soda before measuring and stir in into the cream; pour the cream over the cereal and add the yolk, salt, sweet milk and the flour sifted with the baking powder. Mix all together thoroughly, then beat in the white of egg, beaten light. Drop from the spoon in small cakes upon a hot well oiled griddle. When the cakes are well filled with bubbles, they should be brown underneath and ready to turn, to brown the other side. A heavy iron frying pan answers nicely for a griddle.
Three quick breads from the same chapter, all built on the same principle: cut or stir the fat into sifted dry ingredients, bind with egg and milk, and get the mixture into heat before the baking powder spends itself. A few of the ingredients and oven directions need translating.
- "A hot oven" for the apple trianglesRead this as 425-450F. The dough is a rich biscuit dough spread thin in a round pan, and it wants fast heat so the apple slices soften while the crumb sets. Figure 20-25 minutes for an 8- or 9-inch pan.
- Oven for the blueberry cakeNo temperature is given. Bake muffins at 400F for 18-20 minutes, or a sheet at 375F for 25-30 minutes. Dredging the berries in flour, as directed, does help keep them suspended in a batter this sweet.
- The apple quantities are ambiguousThe apple triangles call for both one pared apple cut in eighths, pressed into the top, and tart apples worked into the dough itself. The amount of sugar for dredging the top is given as one or two tablespoonfuls; either works, depending on how tart the apples are.
- Egg-O-See and GranoseBoth were early flaked breakfast cereals, long discontinued. Any plain unsweetened wheat or corn flake works in the same quantity; crush lightly so the flakes soften in the cream rather than staying leathery.
- Thick sour creamPeriod sour cream was cream left to sour naturally and was acidic and generally richer than modern commercial sour cream. Use full-fat cultured sour cream. The soda reacts with that acid, which both tempers it and gives some lift of its own; the baking powder supplies the rest.
- Mash and sift the sodaOld baking soda caked in the box, and an unbroken lump leaves a bitter yellow spot in a finished cake. Modern soda is free-flowing, but it is still worth sifting it with the flour rather than dropping it into the cream.
- Salt pork on the griddleA slice of salt pork rubbed over hot iron seasons and greases in one motion. A neutral oil wiped on with a paper towel does the same job; the griddle should be hot enough that a drop of water skitters, roughly 375F on an electric pan.
- Halving the blueberry recipeThe instruction to use either the white or the yolk when halving is sound for a batter this sweet and buttery, but the two behave differently: the white gives a lighter, drier crumb, the yolk a richer and more tender one.
- YieldNo yields are given. The apple round cuts into six to eight triangles; the blueberry batter fills a muffin pan (the book notes it may be halved, so the full quantity makes more than a meal for two), and the cereal batter makes a small number of drop cakes.
Quick breads of this kind were the practical dividend of chemical leavening: baking powder reached American kitchens in commercial form in the mid-nineteenth century, and by 1900 a cook could put a sweetened, fruited bread on the table in half an hour without touching yeast. The cereal griddle cakes help date the page. Granose was a flaked cereal associated with the Kellogg sanitarium at Battle Creek, and Egg-O-See was one of the many competitors thrown up by the same flaked-cereal boom; their appearance here shows a cookbook writer folding a newly packaged food into an old griddle-cake formula built on soured cream and soda. That combination of sour cream with soda alongside baking powder is itself a transitional gesture, one foot in the older kitchen where the acid came from the dairy and the other in the newer one where it came from a tin.