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Wheat Cakes
These are the best plain hot griddle cakes without eggs, and they are light, tender and healthful. One quart of flour, three teaspoons of baking powder, onehalf teaspoon of salt. Sift well together and add sweet milk to make into a soft batter. Bake immediately on hot griddle. Should be full one-eighth inch thick when baked. Smother with butter and maple syrup or honey.
A no-egg griddle cake that depends entirely on baking powder for lift, which is why the instruction to bake immediately is the one that matters most.
- Bake immediately, and mean itMuch of the baking powder sold when this book was written was single-acting cream-of-tartar powder, which spends most of its gas the moment it meets liquid. Even with modern double-acting powder, a thin eggless batter loses volume on standing; mix and pour within a minute or two.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume, so a quart is 4 cups; sifted as the recipe directs, that is roughly 16-18 oz of modern all-purpose. You may find you want a little more milk than you expect.
- Sweet milkThis means fresh whole milk, as opposed to the soured or buttermilk called for in soda recipes. Start with about 2 1/2 cups and work up to 3 for a batter that pours in a ribbon rather than a lump.
- Leavening ratioThree teaspoons to a quart of flour is on the lean side by current practice, which usually runs 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons per cup. If the cakes come out dense, add a further teaspoon rather than more milk.
- Griddle heatThe recipe says only 'hot griddle'. Aim medium-high, hot enough that a drop of water sizzles briskly. Too hot and a one-eighth-inch cake sets before the bubbles rise; too cool and an eggless batter turns leathery.
- The thickness cue'Full one-eighth inch when baked' is as much a guide to batter consistency as to pouring. If the cakes come out much thicker, the batter was probably too stiff and can be slackened with milk.
- Fat on the griddleNo fat is listed. A seasoned cast-iron griddle needs only a wipe of butter or oil; anything more on a batter this thin gives a fried edge.
- YieldA large batch from a quart of flour, well beyond a small household. The batter does not keep, so halve or quarter it for two or three.
Eggless griddle cakes like this one were a staple of the chemically leavened American breakfast that took hold after commercial baking powder became cheap and reliable in the last third of the nineteenth century. Before that, plain hot cakes leaned on yeast, on beaten eggs, or on saleratus with sour milk, all of which required forethought; baking powder let a cook go from bare flour to the griddle in five minutes, which is exactly the sort of appeal a cookbook would want to advertise. The claim that they are "healthful" reflects a period preoccupation with digestibility, in which eggs and heavy shortening may have been treated with some suspicion at breakfast. Whatever the sweetener, the closing instruction to "smother" them tells you the cakes were understood as a vehicle rather than the point.