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Griddle Corn Dodgers
Make the same ash cake mixture, but thin it with 11/2 or 2 cups of boiling water. Then add two tablespoons of melted butter and beat thoroughly. Spread on the greased griddle, using a pancake turner dipped in cold water to make cakes 1/4-inch thick. Cook slowly until well browned. Do not turn. Use a buttered pancake turner to strip them off, and eat before they have time to cool. If you are deft enough you can curl them around thin pats of butter, but you have to be quick about it.
A thin scalded-cornmeal cake cooked on one side only. It depends on the ash cake mixture given earlier in the section — essentially cornmeal, salt and water — so read that entry first.
- The hinge: do not turn itThe recipe is explicit that the cake cooks on one side only: the griddle side browns while the thin, wet upper surface sets from the heat beneath.
- Boiling water, not warmThe water must be at a full boil when it goes into the meal. Scalding gelatinises the starch so the thin batter holds together on the griddle instead of running and tearing.
- Griddle heat"Cook slowly" means a moderate griddle, a cast-iron pan over medium-low. Too hot and the surface sets before the centre cooks through.
- Thickness and spreadingA quarter inch is genuinely thin. Dipping the turner in cold water keeps the batter from dragging.
- Cornmeal grindStone-ground or coarse yellow or white meal behaves as intended here. Finer degerminated supermarket meal hydrates differently, so start with the lower 1 1/2 cups and add more only if the batter will not spread.
- Eat them hotThe recipe insists on eating them before they cool; they firm up as they cool, so cook them in batches timed to the rest of the meal rather than holding them.