Name: Vieginia Ash Cake
Ingredients: 2 cups cornmeal; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; cold water; 2 large collard leaves

Vieginia Ash Cake

Ingredients

2 cups cornmeal
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
cold water
2 large collard leaves

Directions

Prepare

Mix cornmeal and salt with enough cold water to form a stiff dough.
Take a large handful of dough and shape it into a cake about 1 inch thick.
Brush the ashes from the hottest part of the fireplace.

Bake

Place one collard leaf on the hearth and lay the cake on it.
Cover the cake with another collard leaf and then with hot ashes.
Bake for 1.5 hours.
Let the ash cake dry before sprinkling ashes on it.

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

Cornmeal: Forms the dough's structure, setting into a firm cake as it bakes.
Collard leaves: Wrap the cake and act as a barrier between it and the hot ashes.

“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.