This afternoon, Nathan and I finished reading Little House in the Big Woods. Towards the end, Laura recounted a story of making Johnny Cakes. I had fleetingly heard of these, but had no idea what they were. So, after a bit of googling I liked what I found - they are a fried cornmeal based bread. I have been wanting to add simple recipes to our list of quick meals and snacks along with something that was made from easily available ingredients (and needed to be gluten free and not requiring a multitude of ingredients to get the "right" texture that is often difficult (or expensive) when trying to replicate wheat flour recipes). I did find many variations of Johnny cakes, but somehow ones using baking powder and ingredients that I didn't think would have been readily available back in settler times kind of didn't strike me as the real deal (and I always get annoyed when I find recipes for cornbread that actually use wheat flour!). I did find a few sites claiming to have the "original" settler version of the recipe, so that's the one we went with and required the least ingredients.
Johnny Cakes
1 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup boiling water
1/2 cup milk
Butter for the pan
Mix the cornmeal, salt and sugar in a bowl. Pour the boiling water over the dry ingredients and stir. Let cool for a few minutes. If the mixture is too thick to spread in the pan, add some milk to get the texture you like.
Heat a lightly greased skillet or griddle. Pour the mixture into the skillet. You can cook the entire recipe at once or you can make small cakes.
Cook at medium heat for about 5 minutes.
Traditionally they are served with maple syrup - here however, we don't produce maple syrup, so sticking to the good old Kiwi pancake tradition we had freshly squeezed lemon juice and sugar sprinkled over ours. They were yummy and quite satisfying!
Here in New Zealand we have our own version of settler/travelling/bush bread called Damper (actually, I think we share this recipe with the Aussies...) - it is made with wheat flour though and generally wrapped around a stick and cooked over an open campfire (well that's how we did it in the Girl Guides). I did find one gluten free version which I may give a go sometime.
5 comments:
hmmm I'll have to try these with Fionn. Thanks for searching out a gf recipe with 'easy' ingredients.
Maybe Nathan would like M8 to bring her "Little House Cookbook" for a look next time we visit. It has a Johnny Cake recipe!
Sharon, that sounds great! In fact, we're due for a visit to you next time anyhow so could have a squizz then.
I'm sitting here catching up on blogs before having breakfast and you supply a tasty breakfast recipe. Thanks!
If it's any help I find the White Wings gluten free flour completely interchangable for wheat flour when I'm cooking and baking...
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