Thursday, September 17, 2009

Explorations in Civil War Era Cooking

We tried eating hardtack a few months ago and decided to pass on making it. We will probably do a baked version of Johnny Cakes next week. But we did make corn bread with corn in it. It was yummy. Hardtack, Johnny Cakes and Cornbread are typical staples of the Union and Confederate soldiers. Union + hardtack. Confederate + cornbread and Johnny Cakes. (I'd rather eat with the confederacy.)


Here are the remains of cooking all the ingredients for Chocolate Taffy. I don't know if they actually made chocolate taffy then, but they did make molasses taffy and I'm sure the method is the same. Basically, mix the ingredients, except butter, bring to a boil and then continue to stir and heat until the temperature is 260 degrees F.


Then add the butter and pour into a buttered tray to cool. As soon as you can you start twisting it and turning it in on itself until it gets too hard to work. Hopefully it has changed to a sheen and is done.

Waiting

Twisting and turning and folding in on itself. It is still pretty hot. It worked well for awhile until it cooled off then it got hard pretty fast. It was hard to cut into little pieces.

When the pieces are all cut, wrap each piece in wax paper. I'm guessing we had around four dozen pieces. It is quite hard but quite yummy.

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