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Old-Timers' Flapjacks
Old-timers make their flapjacks without eggs, so eggs are a variable quantity, accommodating themselves to your supplies. If you are far from cackling hens, however, you'll have better cakes if you carry powdered eggs and use enough to equal 12 egg at least. (A pound of powdered eggs is equivalent to 2 dozen fresh ones.) If you are short of milk, too, you may mix milk with water, or even use all water. Here again it is wise to have a reserve can of Klim, or powdered milk, just to save your pancake face. You would have to be an old timer indeed to make good flapjacks without both eggs and milk. But it can be done! Try it sometime when you're stranded. Just mix up 2 heaping big handfuls of flour, 4 teaspoons of baking powder, and a pinch of salt (held between thumb and 2 fingers) with enough water to make a batter of pancake consistency. Then give it a hard beating to get air into it, and start baking at once. Hot bacon fat is the proper syrup for old-timers' pancakes in the north woods. And "South of the border, down Mejico way," the bronco busters' delight is sow-belly with his flapjacks. Huckleberry or Blueberry Pancakes:
Add 1 good handful of freshly washed and drained berries to recipe for Griddlecakes, putting them into the flour before adding the liquids.
Apple Pancakes:
Add 1 cup chopped apples to recipe for Griddlecakes; or, add 1/2 cup chopped apple and 1/2 cup chopped bacon. Elderflower Pancakes:
Strip the flowerets from elderflowers and add 1 cup or more to Griddlecake recipe.
Elderflower Fritters:
Cut stems from elderflowers, leaving clusters as flat as possible. Dip clusters into pancake batter and fry like pancakes. Corn Meal Pancakes:
Substitute 1 cup corn meal for 1 cup flour in recipe for Griddlecakes. Snow Pancakes:
Make thick pancake batter, using less milk than required by recipe for Griddlecakes. Have griddle ready and hot to go. Rush outdoors and gather 1 cup of newly fallen snow for each pint of milk you have used. Beat the snow rapidly into the pancake batter and bake the cakes at once before the sparkle of the fresh snow is lost. They will be especially light.
A trail formula built around what you do and don't have, followed by a run of variations on the book's basic Griddlecakes. The measurements are deliberately loose — handfuls and finger-pinches — so read the ratios rather than the words.
- Translating the handfulsTwo heaping big handfuls of flour is roughly 2 cups; a pinch held between thumb and two fingers is somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 teaspoon. Four teaspoons of baking powder to 2 cups flour is a heavy hand by modern standards, which makes sense in a batter with no egg and no milk, where the leavening is doing all the lifting.
- The hinge: bake at onceThe recipe says to beat hard and start baking at once. Older single-acting baking powders begin working the moment they are wet and lose much of their lift on standing; even with modern double-acting powder, the batter is better on the griddle straight away than left to sit in the bowl.
- Klim and powdered eggsKlim was a brand of powdered whole milk ("milk" spelled backwards), a standard camp and wartime staple. Any modern instant dry milk or whole-milk powder stands in; reconstitute to the volume of liquid the griddlecake recipe calls for. Dried whole egg is still sold for backpacking, though the pound-to-two-dozen equivalence given here is generous — a pound of dried whole egg is usually reckoned at nearer three dozen — so follow the reconstitution directions on the packet.
- Griddle heat and fatThe book gives no temperature; medium-hot is the working range, and a drop of water should skitter rather than vanish instantly. Hot bacon fat as the pouring sauce is not a joke — it is salt and calories on a cold morning. "Sow-belly" is salt-cured fat pork belly; salt pork or unsmoked side bacon is the nearest thing on a shop shelf.
- Elderflower, with careOnly the white flower clusters of common elder are eaten. The green stems, leaves and bark contain cyanogenic compounds and are bitter and unwholesome, so strip the flowerets from the stalks as directed, and for the fritters trim as close as you can. Avoid the red-berried elder (Sambucus racemosa) entirely. Shake the heads rather than washing them if you want to keep the scent.
- Fruit variationsFold berries or chopped apple into the dry flour first, as written — coating them keeps them suspended instead of sinking and scorching. A good handful of berries is about 3/4 cup. For the apple-and-bacon version, render the bacon before it goes in; raw dice will not cook through in a two-minute pancake.
- Snow pancakesThe snow works because trapped air, not the water, does the lifting, which is why the batter is made thick and the cakes go on the griddle immediately. Gather from a clean drift well away from roads, roofs and paths, and skip it if the snow has sat and settled.
- YieldThe emergency water-only batter makes about ten 4-inch cakes, enough for two hungry people.