Earlier this week, while in our small town’s food co-op, I noticed a new product from my favorite local grain mill: graham flour.
Immediately, I knew which nineteenth century recipe I needed to try next. In the pages of almost every 1800’s cookbook, I’ve been noticing recipes for a type of breakfast muffin called “graham gems.” They’ve been calling to me.
The particular recipe I decided to try was from the 1887 White House Cookbook, and to be totally honest with you…I picked that one because it had more sugar than most graham gem recipes I’ve seen. (And as you’ll notice, that’s still not much!)
These mix up in five minutes, bake in fifteen, and are best eaten while they’re good and hot. Slather them with butter or something sweet like raspberry jam–they’re lovely either way!
Here’s a photo of the recipe as it appears in the cookbook:
A FEW BAKING NOTES:
Let’s talk about gem pans. These were usually cast iron, and made like a shallow muffin tin. If you’re lucky enough to have one, you want to grease it well, put it in the oven when you turn it on to pre-heat, and let it get good and hot before you put the batter in.
If you don’t have a gem pan, no worries. I’d suggest making these in a well-greased muffin pan, not pre-heating it (unless it’s cast iron), and filling the wells about half full. Don’t let not having a gem pan keep you from enjoying this recipe.
How much graham flour should you use?
I found that 4½ cups of graham flour made a batter that dropped nicely, and baked in exactly 15 minutes, like the recipe says. (I followed the instructions for the sweet milk version of “Graham Gems No. 2.”, and loved it.)
One egg or two?
I used two, and would definitely do the same again.
How hot should the oven be?
A hot oven in the 1800’s would have been in the 400-425° range. I went with 400, and with a thoroughly pre-heated gem pan, found that these cooked in exactly the fifteen minutes specified in the recipe.
How many gems does this make?
About 24. My gem pan makes 11 gems, and a half batch of this recipe fills each space with just a little extra batter left over. If you have one gem pan and mix up a full batch of batter, it actually works just fine to bake these in batches. Gems can be removed easily from the hot gem pan if it’s been well-greased, then you can return it to the oven for a few minutes to get good and hot again, before re-filling with the second half of the batter.
If you’d like to hear more about breakfast gems, and making this recipe, I made a video to go with this one. You can watch it right here:
As always, feel free to reply to this email or comment on the video to let me know if there’s a particular type of recipe you’d like to see featured here. I’ll see what I can do!
📖 Recipe
Ingredients
- 3 cups sour milk or see note
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon melted butter or lard
- 2 eggs
- 4 ½ cups graham flour
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400F. Thoroughly grease a cast iron gem pan, or muffin tin. If using a gem pan, pre-heat the gem pan while you prepare the batter.
- Three cups of sour milk, one teaspoonful of soda, one of salt, one tablespoonful of brown sugar, one of melted lard or butter, one or two beaten eggs;
- to the egg add the milk, then the sugar and salt, then the
Graham flour (with the soda mixed in), together with the lard or butter; - make a stiff batter, so that it will drop, not pour, from the spoon.
- Have the gem-pans very hot, fill and bake fifteen minutes in a hot oven.
- The same can be made of sweet milk, using three teaspoonfuls of baking powder instead of soda, and if you use sweet milk, put in no shortening. Excellent.
- Muffins of all kinds should only be cut just around the edge, then pulled open with the fingers.
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