AUNT LYDIA'S CORN CAKE.—
Sift into a large pan a quart of yellow corn meal, and add a level tea-spoonful of salt, (not more.) Have ready a pint of boiling milk, sufficient to make a soft dough. Mix the milk hot into the corn meal, and add about a quarter of a pound, or half a pint of nice fresh butter. Having beaten five eggs till very light and thick, stir them gradually into the mixture, and set it to cool. All preparations of corn meal require much beating and stirring. Have ready some small tin pans, about four or five inches square, and two or three inches deep. They are especially good for baking such cakes, (far better than patty-pans,) and are made by any tinsmith. Grease the pans with the same butter you have used in mixing the cakes. Fill the pans to the top with the above mixture, that the heat may immediately catch the surface, and cause it to puff up high above the edges of the pan. If properly mixed, and well beaten, there is no danger of it running over. If only half filled, and not very light, the mixture when baking will sink down, and become heavy and tough. Set these cakes immediately into a moderate oven. Bake them brown, and send them to the breakfast table hot. Split and butter them.
They may be baked in muffin rings, but the small square pans are best.
This is the very best preparation of Indian cakes. If exactly followed, we believe there is none superior; as is the opinion of all persons who have eaten them. The cook from whom this receipt was obtained, is a Southern colored woman, called Aunt Lydia.
The above quantities will furnish cakes only for a small family. If the family is of tolerable size, double the proportions of each article—as for instance, two quarts of Indian meal, one quart of milk, half a pound of butter, and ten eggs, with a level table-spoonful of salt. Let them be well baked; not scorched on the top, and raw at the bottom.
We recommend them highly as the perfection of corn cakes, if well made, well baked, and with all the ingredients of the best quality.
Use yellow indian meal in preference to white. The yellow is sweeter, has more of the true corn taste, and its color shows at once what it is. The white has less flavor, and may be mistaken for very coarse wheat. It is difficult to keep corn meal good for the whole year. Before the new corn meal is in market, the old is apt to become musty. If you live in a city it is best to buy it as you want it; a few pecks at a time. If in the country, sift your barrel of corn meal soon after it is brought; divide it, and keep it in several different vessels, always well covered.
SHORT CAKE.—
As this requires no rising, it may be mixed and prepared at half an hour's notice. Take a quart and a pint of wheat flour, sift it into a pan, and divide into three parts three quarters of a pound of nice fresh butter. Cut up one piece into the pan of flour, and mix it into a dough with a broad knife, adding, as you proceed, as little water as will be barely sufficient. The water must be very cold. Roll out this lump of paste, dredge it slightly with flour, fold it up, and roll it out again. Then cover it with a second division of the butter, put on the sheet of paste with the knife, and dispersed at equal distances. Sprinkle it with flour, fold it, and roll out the sheet again. Put on the remainder of the butter as before, in bits equally dispersed. Fold, dredge, and roll out the dough into a rather thin sheet. Cut it into small round cakes with the edge of a tumbler, or something like it, using up the clippings of paste left at the last to make one more cake. Have ready a hot griddle or oven. Put on the cakes so as not to touch each other, and bake them light brown on both sides. Send them to table hot, to be split and buttered. Mix and roll out these cakes as fast as possible, and avoid handling them more than you need. Paste made slowly is never light or flakey. Mix quick and roll quick. This is a good plain paste for fruit pot-pies or dumplings.