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Johnnycake (Corn Bread)

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With her Rube Goldberg machine complete, The Child has two more weeks of school left. Her evenings are focused on projects for other classes, and she will spend a day in a study session at with a group of her friends. One mom hosts this event each trimester, and everyone contributes some sort of snack. This time, it’s on a Saturday morning, so everyone is bringing breakfast food, mostly of the unnervingly nutritious  variety. I ask The Child what I should bring, and she asks if I can pick up some mix and make corn bread.

Right.

I often do keep cornbread mix in my house, because either a) Thanksgiving is coming and I am using it in my stuffing or b) The Child has requested it and plans to make it herself. It’s not like I don’t have dozens of cornbread recipes I could use, which I tell her, saying, sure, I’ll make some cornbread for you.

I hunt through a few of my cookbooks and realize that although a have a lot of cornbread recipes, I’ve only ever made one of them: a recipe for buttermilk cornbread that I used in my Thanksgiving stuffing until I discovered that Trader Joe’s mix works just as well (I know – heresy). I finally settle on a recipe for Johnnycake from Metropolitan Cook Book, a 1948 booklet distributed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. It’s not big – only 56 pages – but it does manage to cover a lot of basic recipes (scrambled eggs, meat loaf), as well as a few things I don’t think I’ve even seen on a menu (liver-stuffed green peppers, prune souffle), and provide a lot of basic cooking tips and tables as well.

The resulting Johnnycake was not quite what I expected. I think of cornbread as a very light, sweet cake-type bread that crumbles easily and is is fairly thick. This bread, though, rose to barely a half-inch high, remaining very dense and with a crisp exterior – and not sweet at all. It has an almost chewy texture – it’s not hard to picture a pioneer eating a piece in front of his covered wagon.

It is hard, though, to picture teenage girls eating it in much quantity, and in fact plenty of it returned home after the study session was over. I had a piece with a bit of butter and honey, which was really nice for snacking on, since it didn’t crumble apart and make a mess the way cornbread generally does. It occurred to me that this cornbread would be a really nice accompaniment for chili or ribs – it would be great for dabbing up leftover sauce, since it holds together fairly well. I suspect the batter would work really well as corn sticks, if I had a corn stick pan.

I probably won’t make this again to be served by itself – but I do think next time I make chili, there will be a bit of Johnnycake on the side.

 

Johnnycake

 

Johnnycake (Corn Bread)
 
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Serves: 12
Ingredients
  • 1 cup cornmeal
  • ¼ cup flour
  • 1½ tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 2 eggs
  • ½ cup milk
  • 4 tbsp butter or shortening, melted
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Grease a 9 inch baking pan.
  2. Mix dry ingredients and set aside.
  3. In a separate bowl, beat eggs with milk. Stir into the dry ingredients.
  4. Stir in melted butter (or shortening).
  5. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove from pan and cool on a rack. Cut into 12-16 pieces.
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Aunt Hattie’s Cookies

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Valentine’s Day rolls around, and no surprise – I don’t even really notice. Valentine’s Day, in my universe, consists of me buying things for other people, or rationalizing why it’s a made-up holiday – a Hallmark holiday – thus justifying for someone else why there will be no dinner, no flowers, no whatever.

Except of course if you think about it, every holiday really is made up in some way, and that fact doesn’t make Christmas gifts any less appreciated.

For The Child, though, it’s different. She’s still in school, and although her classmates are no longer exchanging Spongebob Valentines, they still do things. She still wants to do things for everyone in her class – meaning her grade level. Which means she has 36 Valentine things to produce.

We decide on heart-shaped cookies, and go to the store and buy a heart-shaped cutter and some gift bags.

I have an old recipe that I’ve never made, that was passed by my great-great Aunt Hattie to my great-Aunt Kate and from her to me, with promises that it was the best sugar cookie recipe I’d ever make. I’ve been meaning to make those cookies for ages. Both my Aunts have passed and I think of them often and with love, and probably for that reason no occasion has seemed special enough to try out those cookies.

But we needed a sugar cookie recipe to make heart-shaped cookies, so I decided we’d try Aunt Hattie’s recipe. I had visions of us rolling out the dough and cutting heart shapes, but when we got home with our new cookie cutter and actually looked at the recipe,  it turned out it wasn’t that kind of cookie at all.

Roll it into balls, read the instructions, then roll the balls in sugar.

Since by now I had my heart set on finally making these cookies, The Child and I agreed not to lay aside the recipe, but instead, to lay aside the new cookie cutter. I mixed the dough, and she rolled the little balls in coarse confetti-colored sugar.

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They were wonderful straight out of the oven – sweet and chewy and mellow from the corn syrup, with a pleasing bit of crunch from the sugar. They looked pretty in the little cellophane gift bags tied with a red ribbon, all by themselves.

And though most of them were gone – distributed quickly to classmates, there were a few leftovers for me to enjoy on Valentine’s Day.

 

Aunt Hattie's Cookies
 
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Ingredients
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ¾ cup shortening
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 egg
  • ¼ cup white Karo Syrup
  • 1 tsp vanilla
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
  3. Mix dry ingredients and set aside.
  4. Mix remaining ingredients until blended. Add dry ingredients.
  5. Roll pieces of dough into balls about the size of a cherry.
  6. Roll the balls of dough in sugar.
  7. Bake cookies for 8-10 minutes, cool on racks.
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Kate Smith’s Coconut Squares

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A while back, I went on a hunt for the original cookbook that the Busy Day Cake appeared in, and when I found it, I purchased several vintage recipe booklets on ebay. I was astonished to discover one called Kate Smith’s Favorite Recipes, which I assume was also produced by the Swansdown Flour Company, as Ms. Smith is pictured gleefully holding up a box of said flour.

A little more poking around, and I learned that Kate Smith lent her name not only to this booklet, but also to several cookbooks, one of which, The Kate Smith Company’s Coming Cookbook, even has the following review on Amazon:

WARNING: THEY ARE NOT DIETETIC; so have NO expectations of figure friendly recipes.

If you are looking for a Kate Smith cookbook on Amazon, chances are good that you already know who she is. If you don’t know,  check out this video of her singing God Bless America.

Great voice, right? But not a figure that suggests you might want her salad recipes.

Anyway, I bought myself a copy of the Favorite Recipes booklet, because I was curious what sort of treats I might find inside. One day, when I wanted a treat but not a trip to the store, I dove into her book and found a recipe for coconut squares, which I made because I happened to have all the needed ingredients on hand.

After mixing it all up, the batter seemed like it needed something, so I chopped up and tossed in two squares of a Ghirardelli semisweet chocolate bar I had. The squares are moist and soft, with lots of coconut flavor and texture contrasting with smooth bits of chocolate. I think the contrasting crunch of macadamia nuts would also be a nice addition; or if you added chocolate and almonds, you’d have an almond joy square.

I had to make two batches, in the end – the first batch mysteriously disappeared and I later learned were consumed quickly by the neighbor children. The Child then requested I make more, because she was going to her friend’s house and wanted to bring some there, too. They whip up in quickly – in about ten minutes, and disappear quickly as well. The speed, as well as all the possibilities for variations on the theme, mean I’m happy to add this recipe to my permanent collection.

Kate Smith's Coconut Squares
 
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Serves: 12
Ingredients
  • 1 cup sifted cake flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 6 tbsp butter
  • ½ cup sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • ½ unsweetened shredded coconut
  • 2 squares chopped semisweet chocolate
Instructions
  1. Sift flour and baking powder together; set aside. Cream butter thoroughly; add sugar gradually, and cream together until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat well. Add vanilla and coconut. Add flour gradually, beating well after each addition. Mix in chocolate chunks (or whatever you decide to add, if anything).
  2. Spread into a buttered 13x9 baking dish, and bake 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Cool and cut into squares in pan.
Notes
The original recipe says it makes 2 dozen, presumably itty-bitty, squares. I cut a dozen squares, in a size that struck me as reasonable. My point? Your mileage may vary considerably.
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