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Grape-Nuts Cakes
Prepare a flannel-cake preparation, adding two tablespoons grape-nuts in the batter, mix well and proceed to make the cakes exactly the same.
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you already have a flannel-cake batter in hand, and the whole of the instruction is the two tablespoons of cereal stirred in. A few things need filling in.
- Find the base recipe firstFlannel cakes are soft griddle cakes, often raised with yeast and lightened at the end with stiffly beaten egg whites, though many versions use baking powder. Filippini's own flannel-cake entry is presumably the intended starting point; any good raised pancake batter will stand in.
- The batter quantity is unstatedTwo tablespoons is a small addition, and presumably assumes a household-sized batch of batter. If your batter is much smaller, scale the cereal down accordingly.
- Soften the cerealGrape-Nuts is baked hard and softens slowly. It is worth stirring it into the batter and letting it stand 15 to 20 minutes before cooking; if your base recipe finishes with beaten egg whites, add the cereal before that fold rather than after.
- Yeast batter needs lead timeIf the base recipe is yeast-raised, the batter is mixed the night before and left to rise in a warm place. Plan accordingly rather than expecting a breakfast made in twenty minutes.
- Griddle heatUse a greased griddle at moderate heat; modern practice puts this around 375F, where a drop of water skitters rather than vanishing instantly. Keeping the griddle moderate helps guard against the cereal scorching.
- Grape-Nuts todayThe product still exists and is essentially the same wheat-and-barley baked nugget, so no substitution is needed. If unavailable, coarse toasted wheat bran or crushed grape-nut-style cereal gives a similar texture, though not the malty flavour.
- YieldYield depends entirely on the base flannel-cake recipe you use. Serve at once with butter and syrup; these do not hold well.
Grape-Nuts was introduced by C. W. Post's cereal company in Battle Creek, Michigan, in the late 1890s, and by the time Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book appeared the brand was ubiquitous enough that a chef trained in the French manner could drop it into a batter without a word of explanation. That is what makes this brief entry interesting: it is a packaged industrial breakfast food arriving inside a professional cookbook, alongside the classical repertoire. Flannel cakes themselves are older and American, the name generally traced to the soft, napped texture of the cooked cake — a yeast-raised griddle cake distinguished from the plainer buckwheat sort by beaten egg whites. Adding the cereal was one of many manufacturer-friendly uses that circulated in this period, when cereal companies actively promoted their products as cooking ingredients rather than merely bowl food.