Send them to table hot, and eat them with butter.
EXCELLENT BUCKWHEAT CAKES.—A quart of buckwheat meal, sifted.—A level tea-spoonful of salt.—A small half-pint, or a large handful of Indian meal.—Two large table-spoonfuls of strong fresh brewer’s yeast, or four table-spoonfuls of home-made yeast.—Sufficient lukewarm water to make a moderate batter. Mix together the buckwheat and Indian meal, and add the salt. Make a hole in the centre of the meal, and pour in the yeast. Then stir in gradually, from a kettle, sufficient tepid or lukewarm water to make a moderately thick batter when united with the yeast. Cover the pan, set it in a warm place, and leave it to rise. It should be light in about three hours. When it has risen high and is covered with bubbles, it is fit to bake. Have ready a clean griddle well heated over the fire. Grease it well with a bit of fresh butter tied in a clean white rag, and kept on a saucer near you. Then dip out a large ladle-full of the batter, and bake it on the griddle; turning it when brown, with the cake-turner, and baking it brown on the other side. Grease the griddle slightly between baking each cake; or scrape it smooth with a broad knife. As fast as you bake the cakes, lay them, several in a pile, on a hot plate. Butter them, and if of large size cut them across into four pieces. Or send them to table to be buttered there. Trim off the edges before they go in.
If your batter has been mixed over night, and is found sour in the morning, dissolve a salt-spoon of pearlash or sal-eratus in a little lukewarm water, stir it into the batter, let it stand a quarter of an hour, and then bake it. The alkali will remove the acidity, and increase the lightness of the batter. If you use soda for this purpose it will require a tea-spoonful.
If the batter is kept at night in so cold a place as to freeze, it will be unfit for use. Do not grease the griddle with meat-fat of any sort.
NICE RYE BATTER CAKES.—A quart of lukewarm milk.—Two eggs.—A large table-spoonful of fresh brewer’s yeast, or two of home-made yeast.—Sufficient sifted rye meal to make a moderate batter.—A salt-spoon of salt. Having warmed the milk, beat the eggs very light, and stir them gradually into it, alternately with the rye meal, adding the salt. Put in the meal, a handful at a time, till you have the batter about as thick as for buckwheat cakes. Then stir in the yeast, and give the batter a hard beating, seeing that it is smooth and free from lumps. Cover the pan, and set it in a warm place to rise. When risen high, and covered with bubbles, the batter is fit to bake. Have ready over the fire a hot griddle, and bake the cakes in the manner of buckwheat. Send them to table hot, and eat them with butter, molasses, or honey.
Yeast powders, used according to the directions that accompany them, and put in at the last, just before baking, are an improvement to the lightness of all batter cakes, provided that real yeast or eggs are also in the mixture. But it is not well to depend on the powders exclusively, particularly when real yeast is to be had. The lightness produced by yeast powders alone, is not the right sort; and though the cakes are eatable, they are too tough and leathery to be wholesome. As auxiliaries to genuine yeast, and to beaten eggs, yeast powders are excellent.
Indian batter cakes may be made as above—or rye and Indian may be mixed in equal proportions.