Andrew Jorgensen

The ingredients list is from the recipe our family uses, titled “Grandma King’s Hot Cakes.” The instructions are based on my own experience. It’s from my Grandma Jorgensen’s ward cookbook so there was probably someone living in Salina who had a Grandma King who made these. That’s as well as I can do for attribution.

1 Egg
3 T Sugar
3 T Oil
½ t Vanilla
1 C Milk
1 C Flour
1 T Baking Powder
½ t Salt

Mix flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat egg, sugar, and oil in a larger bowl. Add milk to wet ingredients. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Let stand a while while you heat the griddle.

There’s almost no point telling you what temperature to cook them at. The recipe at my parent’s house says 450° but this morning I cooked them at closer to 300°. I suspect there isn’t a close correlation between the temperature you set your griddle to and the actual temperature of the surface. Or maybe it really doesn’t matter much and it just changes the cooking time. As a kid I was taught to cook the first side until a bubble popping on the top leaves a hole that doesn’t close. Experience tells me this is only good advice if you cook them at a lower temperature. I cook by color and smell.

The baking powder was listed as 3 t in the original but that’s exactly the same as 1 T. I suspect that might be too much baking powder but I haven’t tried it with less yet. Vanilla is not in the original. The order I’ve set for mixing should allow you to dirty only one tablespoon and one cup.

I used to think that mixing technique was important and I’ve experimented with various over the years, including two cake methods and the muffin method. The muffin method (roughly what I listed) is probably the right one but the results seem to be about the same any way you do it if the batter is not too thick. Today, for instance, I mixed my batter with a hand mixer. Normally this would result in a very bready, even rubbery texture, but with a thin batter it doesn’t make much of a difference.

Anyone who bakes much knows that one cup of flour is a useless measurement because the density of flour varies widely depending on how you put it into the cup. I have a can of flour which I always shake before opening and then I try to make sure I don’t pack the flour while measuring. Obviously it would be better to measure by weight. The amount of flour determines how thick the batter is.

I like to top mine with butter and cinnamon sugar.