Skip to main content
Dessert

Simple Indian Cake

A simple cake made from fine Indian flour, butter, salt, and water, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Simple Indian Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the Indian meal, butter, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add warm water gradually to form a soft dough.

  3. Butter your baking tins.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough into balls and place them on the tins.

  2. Pat the balls into thin round cakes.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned on both sides.

Serve

  1. Split the cakes open and butter them while hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Fine indian meal
Forms the main structure of the cake as the starch that sets when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and helps the cakes brown in the oven.
Warm water
Hydrates the meal so it binds into a soft, pliable dough.

The step that matters

Patting the balls into thin cakes. Thin, even cakes bake through and brown on both sides at the same rate. Thick or uneven cakes can stay doughy in the middle or scorch on the outside.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes