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Graham Griddle Cakes
1 cup graham 2 teaspoons baking powder ½ cup flour 2 eggs 1 tablespoon sugar 11 cups milk 1 teaspoon salt Scald milk, and pour on to graham flour. When cold, add remaining ingredients; beat well and cook as Griddle Cakes. 2 cups bread crumbs 2 cups scalded milk 1 teaspoon salt
A straightforward whole-wheat griddle cake from the era when graham flour was a household staple. The batter is started the night before in effect: scalded milk is poured over the graham meal and left to cool, which softens the bran.
- Graham flour"Graham" here means coarsely ground whole wheat with the bran and germ left in, not the sweetened cracker. Modern stone-ground whole wheat flour is the closest match; regular fine whole wheat works but gives a smoother cake.
- The milk quantityThe amount of milk as printed is not usable as written. For a batter of this size, expect somewhere between 1 and 1½ cups total; add it gradually until the batter pours thickly from the ladle.
- Scalding and soakingScald means heating the milk to just below boiling, until it steams and bubbles ring the pan. Pouring it hot over the graham and letting it cool fully is the step that matters — it hydrates the bran so the cakes are tender rather than gritty.
- Add leavening lastThe baking powder goes in only after the mixture has cooled, along with the eggs, sugar and salt. Stirring it into hot milk spends the lift before the batter reaches the griddle.
- Griddle heatMedium. Whole-grain batters tend to brown faster than white-flour ones, so err slightly cooler than you would for plain pancakes.
- When to turnTurn once, when the bubbles that rise stop closing over and the edges look set. Graham cakes do not take kindly to being pressed or flipped twice.
- YieldRoughly a dozen and a half small cakes, depending how large you drop them -- enough for three or four at breakfast.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer of the 1830s who preached that finely bolted white flour had been stripped of what the body needed and that coarse home-ground wheat, plain food and cold water were the road to health. His name outlived his movement and attached itself to the flour, the bread and eventually the cracker. By the time this book was compiled, graham flour was an ordinary grocery item that gave breakfast cakes a nuttier flavor and a heartier reputation.