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Baking-Powder Breads: Griddlecakes
Blueberry Griddlecakes. 1 cupful blueberries, 2 cupfuls flour, BAKING-POWDER BREADS 1 teaspoonful salt, 1 tablespoonful brown sugar, 2 teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder, 2 eggs, 2 cupfuls milk.
Sift together flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder; add beaten eggs, milk, and berries. Mix into a batter.
Have griddle hot enough to form a crust as soon as the batter touches it. In order to confine the juice of berries, turn quickly to form a crust on the other side.
Griddled Muffins. 1 cupful flour, 1 teaspoonful butter, 1 egg, 2 teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder, cupful milk.
Mix the flour, butter, baking powder, and egg with the milk. Place small muffin rings on a hot griddle, put a little fat into each ring, fill them half full with the batter, and bake over a moderate fire till light brown. Turn with a pancake turner, and bake the same on the other side.
French Pancakes. 3 eggs, 2 cupfuls milk, 2 teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder, A pinch of salt, cupfuls flour.
Beat the yolks of the eggs light; pour over them the milk; add gradually the baking powder, salt, and flour; fold in lightly the whipped whites of the eggs. Bake by large spoonfuls on a hot griddle. Spread each cake as soon as baked with jam, and shape into a roll.
Bannocks (Irish recipe). 4 cupfuls flour, cupful butter, 11 cupfuls milk, teaspoonful salt, 3 teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder. a Mix the ingredients to a soft dough; roll an inch thick, shape into cakes, six inches across, with a large cooky cutter, and bake on a hot griddle. Before taking from the fire, be sure they are baked to the heart.
Split in two, butter, and serve hot.
One-Egg Griddlecakes. 3 cupfuls flour, 3 teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder, 1 teaspoonful salt, 1 egg, 2 tablespoonfuls melted butter, 2 cupfuls milk.
Sift the dry ingredients, separate the egg, and add to flour the milk and beaten yolk. Beat thoroughly, add the melted butter and white of egg, beaten to a stiff froth. Bake at once.
Whole-Wheat Griddlecakes. 1½ cupfuls white flour, cupful whole-wheat flour, teaspoonful salt, 4 tablespoonfuls sugar, 4 teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder, 1½ cupfuls milk, 2 tablespoonfuls melted butter.
Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar; stir into a batter with the milk, the beaten egg and butter. Bake at once.
Indian Griddlecakes. 1 cupful Indian meal, 1 cupful flour, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoonful butter, teaspoonful salt, 2 teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder, Milk.
Put Indian meal into a mixing bowl and pour over it enough scald- MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK ing milk to make a thick mush.
When it cools, add the flour and enough cold milk to make a thick batter, add the eggs, well beaten, the butter, melted, the salt, and baking powder. Beat till full of bubbles, then bake on a hot griddle.
Hominy Gems. 2 cupfuls cold hominy, 3 eggs, 2 cupfuls milk, 1 cupful cornmeal, 1 teaspoonful salt, 1 tablespoonful sugar, 2 teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder, 1 tablespoonful melted butter.
Put the cornmeal in a mixing bowl, pour over it the scalded milk, beat thoroughly, and when cool add the hominy. Stir in the eggs, whip to a froth, add salt, sugar, baking powder, and butter, beat hard, pour into greased gem pans, and bake in a hot oven. This recipe when thinned with more milk makes delicious griddlecakes.
Graham Griddlecakes. 1½ cupfuls Graham flour, cupful white flour, 2 teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder, 2 cupfuls milk, 1 egg, 1 tablespoonful melted butter.
Sift the dry ingredients, then beat into a batter with egg, milk, and butter; bake on a griddle. Egg Biscuits. 4 cupfuls flour, 2 teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder, cupful butter, 2 eggs, cupfuls milk, 2 teaspoonfuls sugar, teaspoonful salt.
Sift the dry ingredients, rub in the butter, and make into a dough with the beaten egg and milk. Turn out on a baking board, roll into a sheet and mold into biscuits, as directed for Parker House rolls. Bake fifteen minutes in a quick oven.
A run of griddle batters from the era when chemical leavening was new enough to be advertised by brand in every ingredient list. Several quantities in the original have lost their fractions, so read the notes below before mixing.
- Calumet baking powderCalumet was a commercial baking powder, still sold today and broadly comparable in strength to a modern double-acting powder. Substitute measure for measure. Note that the recipes themselves twice say to bake at once, so treat that instruction as meant literally.
- Missing fractionsA number of the lists give "cupful butter", "cupfuls flour" and "11 cupfuls milk" with no fraction attached. For griddle batters aim for a pourable consistency roughly the thickness of heavy cream; for the bannocks and egg biscuits, 1/2 cup butter to 4 cups flour and about 1 1/2 cups milk gives a soft dough.
- Griddle heat"Hot enough to form a crust as soon as the batter touches it" is about 375F on an electric griddle, or a heavy pan where a drop of water skitters rather than sits. The blueberry cakes depend on this: a cool griddle lets the fruit juice bleed into the pan and stick.
- Moderate and quick ovensFor the hominy gems, a "hot oven" is roughly 400-425F; the egg biscuits' "quick oven" is in much the same range for the stated fifteen minutes. The griddled muffins' "moderate fire" means medium-low heat, since the rings hold a thick batter that needs time to set through.
- Indian mealIndian meal is cornmeal. The scalding step is not optional decoration -- it hydrates the coarse grain so the cakes are tender rather than gritty, and the batter must cool before the eggs go in.
- Cold hominyThe hominy gems assume leftover cooked hominy, cold and stiff. Canned whole hominy, drained and chopped, works but gives a chunkier crumb than the original intends.
- Whole-wheat cakesThe method calls for a beaten egg that the ingredient list omits. One egg suits the quantities given.
- Muffin ringsMetal crumpet or English muffin rings, greased inside, do the job. Fill no more than half full and expect the second side to color faster once the ring is lifted away.
- YieldEach of the griddlecake batters makes roughly a dozen to eighteen cakes, or four servings. The bannocks, cut six inches across and an inch thick, give only three or four cakes from the stated dough; the egg biscuits about eighteen.
These pages come from a period when baking powder was aggressively promoted through cookbooks, and the repetition of a brand name in every ingredient list is the tell: manufacturers supplied recipe copy, sometimes whole booklets, to household compendia and women's magazines. The dishes themselves are older than the powder. Bannocks are a British Isles griddle bread traditionally made with barley or oatmeal on a bakestone or girdle, and the Irish attribution here reflects the soda-bread tradition that flourished after chemical leaveners reached rural kitchens in the nineteenth century. Indian meal and hominy cakes belong to the American side of the same habit, using corn where wheat was dear. The griddle mattered because it needed no oven: a household cooking on a stovetop or over an open fire could put hot bread on the table in minutes, which is why so many of these breads are cakes rather than loaves.