Canoe and Camp Cookery: A Practical Cook Book for Canoeists, Corinthian ...

Mix well one pint of Hecker's prepared flour with one-half pint of cold milk or water. Cook as above. Corn Dodgers. Mix one pint of 'corn meal, one small teaspoonful of salt and one tablespoonful of sugar with warm (not scalding) water enough to make a moderately stiff batter. Make into flat cakes about three-quarters of an inch thick, and fry in boiling fat till brown. Fried in bacon fat and eaten with the fried bacon they are very palatable. Corn Pone or Ash Cakes. If unprovided with the portable oven or bake tin recommended in Chapter I., mix up a pint of corn meal with water and a pinch of salt into a stiff dough, make into cakes, and set them on a clean, hot stone close to the coals of a hot fire. When the outside of the cakes has hardened a little cover them completely in hot ashes. In fifteen to twenty-five minutes rake them out, brush off the ashes, and devour quickly. Any ashes adhering after the brushing process can be readily removed by cutting out the irregularities in the crust where they have lodged. The writer has known a party of ladies, who could scarcely be induced to taste these cakes at first, become so fond of them after a trial as to insist upon having them three times a day for a week in camp. Baking Powder Biscuits. y^ Baking Powder Biscuits* Put one pint of flour into a deep vessel, mix into it two large teaspoonfuls of baking powder * and a pinch of salt ; then rub in one small teaspoonful of lard or butter, lessening the amount of salt if the latter is Used, and add enough cold water or milk to make a soft dough. Handle as little as possible, but roll into a sheet about three-quarters of an inch thick, and cut into round cakes with an empty tin cup. Lay the biscuits close together in a well-greased tin, and bake a few minutes in the coals, as described above for Johnnycake. Hecker's Flour Biscuits Require only the mixing of the flour with water, and are then ready to bake. Quick Camp Bread. Make a biscuit dough as above, and roll it to a thickness of half an inch. Grease a frying-pan and set it over the hot embers till the grease begins to melt. Then put the dough into the pan and set it on the fire, shaking it frequently to prevent the dough from adhering. When the crust has formed on the bottom, take the bread out of the pan and prop it up on edge, close to the fire, turning it occasionally to insure its being baked through. Or, turn the bread in * See note on baking powder in the chapter of " Hints. » 40 Canoe and Camp Cookery. the frying pan until it is cooked through. This bread will not keep soft long, and the writer prefers, when depending for any length of time upon his own baking, to make Unleavened Bread. This is the kind almost wholly used by coasting vessels, and is cooked as above in a frying-pan, even when there is a galley-stove with a good hot oven on board the vessel. The dough is mixed up with a quart of wheat flour, one teaspoonful of lard, a teaspoonful of salt and sufficient water to make it stiff. «4»It is then beaten or hammered lustily on a board or smooth log until it becomes elastic. 4-When cut up into biscuit it can be baked in the portable oven among the coals. It is called " Maryland Biscuit " along the Potomac and Chesapeake. Fried and Boiled Eggs Are so easy to prepare that no instruction is necessary in these familiar methods of cooking them. Poached Eggs. Into a frying pan nearly full of boiling water containing a teaspoonful of salt slip carefully the eggs one by one, breaking each previously into a cup. Keep them on the surface of the water, if possible, and boil gently three or four minutes, dipping up some of the water with a spoon and pouring it over the tops of the eggs. Serve on toast. Scrambled £ggs. /^i Scrambled Eggs.