It’s very common for soldiers in the 18th century, especially when they were on the
march, they’d be issued their rations, maybe several days ahead of time they’d be issued
several days of meat and then they’d be issued their flour or their bread ration,
and because they would be gone for a while they would likely be given just flour instead
of bread as that would just go bad and so there they were on the march with not very
much equipment to use and all they had was flour and they would have to make some kind
of food with it. Today we’re going to make fire cake or ash cake, a very, very simple
thing that the soldiers would be able to make with just the flour and a little bit of water.
So what are we going to need to make ash cake? Well, number one we’re going to need to
have good ashes. We’re going to have to have a really nice ash bed to work with, good
and hot. So we don’t have very much equipment. We’re going to try to do this with three
different methods. We’re going to use a simple bannock board, or if you don’t have
a board like this, maybe you could just use a half split of firewood that’s nice and
flat. We’re also going to use a method where we put leaves around our fire cake or ash
cake and so all you’re going to need for that is some large leaves like a grape leaf
or a large tree leaf, burdock or cabbage leaves, something like that. And the last method,
we’re not going to use anything at all, we’re just going to make our cake and we’re
going to place them right on the coals. So, now our coals are getting really close
to being ready to use. Let’s make up our dough. I’ve got a simple wooden bowl here
for us to make our dough in, the flour that we’ve been issued, and I’m going to make
up 3 or 4 ash cakes here. If you have any salt, available to you, which the soldiers
may or may not have had salt that day or that particular time, but salt will add a lot to
the taste of your fire cake, so in this case we are going to add a good bit of salt to
it, and we’re going to stir that around while our ingredients are still dry so it
will be easy to mix. And now we’re going to need some water. We add enough water to
make a stiff paste, and we’re going to start out with maybe a little less than we need
so that we don’t go overboard. For the ash cakes that we’re going to cook on the bannock
board, we’re going to get this to be a little stickier because we need to stick it to the
board. It needs to stay there while it’s cooking.
Okay, we’ve got our dough mixed up. It’s nice and the right kind of consistency, a
little stiff but still sticky enough to work with and I’ve got this. We’re going to
take this one and we’re going to flatten it out on our bannock board, going to get
it nice and thin. The thinner, the better it’s going to cook. We need to make sure
that it’s sticky enough that it sticks to the board. Our board has two holes in it so
that we can prop it up. Let’s put this up by the fire and let this cook while I’m
working on the other ones. Okay, we’ve got the fire banked up a little
bit higher on this spot and I’m going to place the board, I don’t want to get it
too close so it catches on fire, but I can feel the heat here, that feels pretty good.
I’ve got our little stick here to prop it up at an angle, and that feels really good.
We’re going to let that cook. Let’s use leaves for our next fire cakes.
I’m going to keep watching that one and make sure it doesn’t burn, but here’s
our next fire cake. Let’s take out a dough section here, and we’re going to make it
into a patty. We’re not making it as thin as that but, you know, thinish. We’re going
to make it in relationship to the size of our leaves. I’ve got here some wild grape
leaves and some cottonwood leaves, depending on the time of year, you know, different leaves
are going to work better than other ones but you want a nice big leaf that’s going to
protect your fire cake, so let’s use our grape leaf on the inside because a
bit of the taste does end up on the fire cake. We’re going to put grape leaves on
the inside and then a little extra protection, because the leaves are going to slowly burn
through, we’re going to put the cottonwood leaves on, and I’ve got a really nice coal
section here, we’re just going to place this right onto the coals. Since it’s got
the coals right on top and below it, it’s not going to take that long to cook, 3, or
4, maybe 5 minutes. That’s something you’re going to judge, you’re not going to be able
to tell, so it takes a little experience to know when it’s ready to come out. The ash
bed is really important that you’re cooking on. If your ashes are grey, they’re probably
already too cool to do any cooking on, like this color. This white hot ash over here,
it’s really warm, that’s the kind of ash we’re cooking with. The stuff that’s still
white. If it’s grey, it’s gotten too cold to cook with.
Our bannock board biscuit looks like it still needs a little bit of time to cook. I’ll
have to turn it over pretty shortly, but this one’s probably ready to come out. It’s
been about 4 minutes or so. I’m just going to lightly scrape off our ashes from the top
and scoop the whole patty out. There it is. Let’s put it on top of this board so we
can see how it turned out. There we are. It feels like this one’s just about done.
I could have probably left it in about another minute or two but it’s still hot, it’s
still cooking so I’m just going to go ahead and set this off to the side where it will
stay warm, but it’s still hot so it’s still cooking on the inside.
Our bannock board fire cake over here, you can see it’s starting to brown up along
the bottom side so I’m going to go ahead and rotate the board so the other side, the
top side of it, can cook. You want to be really gentle when we turn this over so that we don’t
knock the bread off, and I’m going to tilt this a little bit further because our coals
are getting a little bit cooler, but they’re still really warm right there, so it should
cook right up. Well, let’s try our fire cake where we actually
put it directly on the coals. If you don’t have good leaves to work with you can just
try cooking our fire cake right on the coals. It’s going to char up on the outside but
that’s all we have to work with so let’s do it. We’re going to place it right on
the coals here. I’ve got a nice hot section of coals and we’ll place it right on there.
I’m going to use my tomahawk because this fire is hot. There we go, and I’m going
to find some hot coals close by and we’re going to set them on top, lightly and gently
bury it in the hot coals. I’m not going to bury it completely. I don’t want to lose
it in the fire. I want to be able to see around the edges just a little bit so I can watch
it cooking. Well, it looks like our bannock board fire
cake is ready to pull off. It’s browned up all over on the outside so we’re going
to go ahead and pull this off the board and put it onto our plate. This may be tough to
get off, but this one came off, now you can see it’s still a little damp on that side,
cooked completely on that side. I call that done.
Well, our bannock bread’s off, the other one’s out, it smells like our ash cake that’s
cooking right here in the coals is probably ready to pull out too, so let’s pull it
out with that, dust the ashes off the top. We’ve still got some that are sticking to
the bottom, gently, might still be hot coals, so I’m not going to touch them. A little
bit of ash is known to calm your digestive tract so the ash isn’t going to hurt you
a bit, and it looks really good for cooking right there in the coals.
So there you have it. You’ve got the three different kinds of ash cake or fire cake.
We’ve got our bannock board cake, the one we cooked right in the ashes and then the
one we used the leaves for protection. Let’s try these out. Definitely very edible, I think
I’ll have them for supper tonight. Any of these things you’ve seen here you can see
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