Journey Cake
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).
Make the dough
In a bowl, combine cornmeal, lard, and salt.
Add warm water gradually until the mixture is spreadable.
Bake
Spread the mixture on a board or in biscuit tins.
Bake until golden brown before the hot fire or in the oven.
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
- Cornmeal
- Forms the bulk of the cake and sets as the structure when baked.
- Lard
- Adds fat that keeps the cake tender and helps it brown.
- Warm water
- Hydrates the cornmeal so the mixture becomes spreadable and binds it together.
The step that matters
Adding the warm water gradually. Cornmeal absorbs water at different rates, so adding it slowly lets you stop at a spreadable texture. Too much water makes the mixture loose and the cake gummy, while too little leaves it crumbly and dry.
“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.
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