Handy Trail Food - Campfire Journey Cakes

jurnee cakes are an old-world food born out of convenience taverns often serve them to weary travelers that were very portable and they could be taken on a trip I'm about to demonstrate a very American version of the journey cake one that uses a new world grain thanks for joining us today on 18th century cooking with James Townsend inside our recipe comes from a collection of recipes by Harriet pickney Hori from about 1770 let's get started you're going to need whole hominy and you can often find it canned in your local grocery store now we hope to do an episode very soon on making your own hominy but for now this is just going to have to do we're using about a pint we need to mash this into a pulp you can make quick work of this if you're in a modern kitchen by pulsing it in a food processor next we're going to be adding to Jill of all-purpose flour now the recipe calls for one but we found to works much better a Jill was a standard unit of measure in the 18th century about 4 ounces probably its best-known use was giving soldiers and sailors their daily rum ration a practice that the British Navy continued until very recently interestingly there was also the Jack that was half the size of a Jill we offered these on our website so eight ounces of flour two tablespoons of milk a dash of salt and mix it all together well this recipe calls for baking these journey cakes on a banach board so I've got a nice thin board here that we can use for a banach board today the cakes were pressed on and propped before the fire until they were baked I'm dipping my spoon in the milk and smoothing this out and this will also help brown the surface if you're baking this at home you can place this on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper you probably need to bake this at 350 degrees for maybe 45 minutes or until it's nice and golden brown so to bake with this Bannock board we're going to set it right by the fire right up close to it we don't want it to actually burn the board or catch your own fire but you want to prop it up right up next to the fire so it can bake this has been cooking about 30 minutes and we've been watching it rather closely it's really it's firmed up nicely and the color looks really good so I think it's ready so let's get this off the board so I've got to cut off the board and it looks like it might have been able to bake a little bit longer it's pretty soft on the underside but no matter what you do when you're baking it on a banach board like this it's more cooked on one side than it is on the other let's give it a try wonderful nice salty corn flavor just like I like really a lot of that flavor is what's coming in from the hominy itself because hominy has such a you know an umami to it it's got a wonderful little flavor so these turn out really good and I suppose you know if we kept baking this maybe even we flipped it over and kind of baked the back side a little bit we could use this as a travel cake we could we could put it in our haversack and take it on our on our trip well this this journey cake would be a wonderful thing to demonstrate at an event especially for a traveler a Voyager or or a soldier who wants something that you can do right at the campfire now if you are interested in getting started with living history or just what it would be like we have a free course that you can take I'll put a link down in the description section of this video well this journey cake was in a wonderful little experiment and it turned out great I want to thank you for coming along with us as we savor the flavors in the aromas of the 18th century if you're new to our channel I want to welcome you you can subscribe by clicking the button right up here also check out our related videos thanks so much for watching you

Channel: Townsends

Views: 99,927

Rating: 4.9856553 out of 5

Keywords: jon townsend, 18th century cooking, reenacting, history, 18th century, campfire, historical reenacting, jas townsend and son, cooking, journey cake

Id: l8_0vYg3PCE

Length: 4min 26sec (266 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/g2f1g6n1]

I love these videos but I can't help but feel like there is intense pain and tragedy within the heart of the host

[u/sableine]

1805 so it'd be 19th century, no?

[u/lil_waynes_colon]

"D' OH! , yee? "