My lifelong love of reading was sparked by one of my very first books, ‘Little House in the Big Woods’ by Laura Ingalls Wilder. When I first read it in the 1970s, I was instantly captivated by Laura’s world. What was an ordinary day like for a girl in the 1870s? What did she wear? What was dinnertime like? What about school? There was so much to explore in a life so different from my own.

Fast forward to the summer of 2024, when I set myself a project: to reread – or more accurately, listen to – the entire ‘Little House’ book series on Audible. Partway through the first book, I came across a paragraph about Johnny cakes that immediately caught my attention.

“Laura always wondered why bread made of corn meal was called johnny-cake. It wasn’t cake. Ma didn’t know, unless the Northern soldiers called it johnny-cake because the people in the South, where they fought, ate so much of it. They called the Southern soldiers Johnny Rebs. Maybe, they called the Southern bread, cake, just for fun. Ma had heard some say that it should be called johnny-cake. She didn’t know. It wouldn’t be very good bread to take on a journey.”

What were Johnny Cakes? What did they look like, what was their texture, how did they taste, and most importantly, how do you make them? The printed copy of my ‘Little House’ book yielded no recipe, so I sleuthed the Internet to find it was actual a very simple, common recipe in the late 1800s. To assuage my curiosity, the next logical step was to make a batch myself.

Cornmeal, a little sugar, and a little salt.

I topped mine with homemade butter and syrup, Laura does not tell us how they ate theirs.

The Johnny Cakes are very much like fried corn mush and without the addition of butter and syrup, didn’t have much flavor on their own. This was likely a food eaten in the 1800s more for the available (and inexpensive) ingredients and the fact it was a filling meal. That being said, my Johnny Cakes were a tasty, crunchy, and enjoyable trip to another time. They made me feel like Laura and I perhaps could have been friends had I only been born 100 years earlier.

Edited to Add: For the record I am such a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books, I made her the subject of one of my art journal spreads last year.