Home › Recipes › Hoe Cakes, or Corn Bannocks

Hoe Cakes, or Corn Bannocks

2 pounds of white corn meal. Half pound of lard. 1 teaspoonful of salt. Put the lard in the middle of the meal with the salt, and pour in a little boiling water to melt it. Then add cold water or milk to make like thin mush. Bake on a griddle or "hoe," placing the dough with a spoon and flattening out thin. "Why cannot we have this?" "You can have it." "What is it folded so nicely in a napkin? Looks like brown bread." "It is brown bread." "And you have brown bread plenty on hand all the time?" "O, but this is not bakers' Boston brown; this is delicious." That was said before the Chicago fire. O, incomprehensible hotel boarders who live always on the fat of the land and tire of it! But in a well-regulated hotel you can have anything. This is one of the varieties of bread made principally of corn meal which the Boston writer before quoted, had in mind: "On account of its lack of gluten, Indian meal is not well adapted for making bread without a slight admixture of wheat or rye flour." That is the eastern idea, not the southern or western. This kind of bread is very It contains no shortening, except what may be conveyed by rich buttermilk, when that can be had instead of baking powder, and is probably very healthful eaten cold. Reckless inhabitants of the hotel world, generally prefer to eat it right away quick while it is hot. And still very few deaths occur.

Steamed, or "Home-Made" Brown Bread. 2 pounds of corn meal. 1 quart of boiling water. Half pint of re-boiled, black molasses (coffee cup full). 1 1/2 pints of cold milk. 1 teaspoonful of salt. 4 heaping teaspoonfuls of baking powder. 1 pound of graham flour. 1 pound of white flour.

Pour the water boiling into the meal and stir; then mix in the molasses and the other ingredients in the order as written--the powder in the flour--and stir up thoroughly. It makes a stiff batter, too soft to be handled. Put it in two pails with tight-fitting lids and steam from 4 to 6 hours, then bake a short time to form a crust. The pails should be made for the purpose, of best stovepipe iron, a trifle wider at top than at bottom. Brush a little lard over the insides and then wipe it off thoroughly before putting in the dough, and there will be no stains on the crust when done. Where there is a steam chest to the range, over which vegetables are steamed, the pails can be set inside in the water, and then there is nothing in the bread line more easily made than this. Makes 8 pounds of bread; cuts into about 4 dozen slices. Enough for the average orders of 75 people for one meal, there being other kinds of bread. But if you have had it talked about all through the house 40 people will get away with this much easily. Such is the effect of advertising. Should the bread cut sticky, use a little less liquid in mixing next time. Our "Twenty ways" will include four baked puddings of Indian meal, of different degrees, and this following will, probably, by good judges, be considered the best. "Tell that cook," said a healthy St. Louis captain, his boat then laid up in the ice, "to make this once more and let me know when, and then he may go to heaven."

Most of us have heard something like that in a sarcastic mood, but this was a jolly bon vivant, and was being helped the second time, so before "that cook" started to heaven, I prevailed upon him to abstract and perfect out of the chaos of his guesswork the following receipt.