Golden Pancakes with Raspberry Topping

Tomorrow ends one of the most unusual Februaries I've ever experienced. We have had a month with now rain...none at all. February is often the month with the most rain in the year, so to have none is not only amazing but a little scary. Instead we have had some days with fog in the morning, a few days with clouds all day, but mostly we have had sunshine.

Along with all that sunshine and the resulting warm weather have come the plum and almond trees, blooming like debs ready for a ball, all fluffy in shades of pink and white. Ditto the manolias. Spring bulbs bloomed early and the first flush are gone, replaced by the first tulips. The rosemary shrubs are covered with pale blue flowers when usually we get a sprinkling of blue flowers. My azalea is gorgeous, covered with fluffy, ruffly dark pink and white blossoms. It's like Easter in February...maybe I should be coloring eggs, too?

Not sure if it is related to the warm weather or not, but our Costco has had beautiful raspberries for weeks now. Recently I made pancakes for breakfast and topped them with a mixture of fresh raspberries cooked in a little water and sugar and almond extract. Very springlike! I used some maple syrup, too because I just love maple with pancakes. Went well together.

Golden Pancakes with Raspberry Topping
Elle's recipe
Serves 4

Pancakes

1¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar
1¾ teaspoon baking powder
1 egg plus three egg yolks, lightly beaten
3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 cup milk

Sift together the dry ingredients. In another bowl  combine the egg and egg yolks, melted butter and milk.

Quickly, with a few strokes, stir the wet ingredient mixture into the dry mixture. If too thick, add up to ¼ cup additional milk. Lumps are OK. Also OK to use non-dairy milk and butter instead of regular, if desired.

Ladle batter on a hot, greased griddle. Turn when small bubbles appear around the edges. Cook until second side has browned. Repeat until batter is used up.

Raspberry Topping

1 pint fresh raspberries, washed and drained
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon almond extract

In a small saucepan, over low-medium heat, gently heat all the ingredient together until mixture comes to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Let simmer 2 minutes, then remove from heat, stir, and let cool to warm and serve over a stack of pancakes.

Serves 4.

Tropical Pancakes

Does your family have a day on the weekend for making special breakfasts? Maybe you do brunch instead? Well, think about making these delightful pancakes and you'll enjoy the weekend even more.

I took two fairly basic recipes for pancakes from Marion Cunningham's The Breakfast Book, mixed them together, added some yogurt, substituted non-dairy soy creamer and non-dairy margarine for milk and butter, used white whole wheat and Irish Whole Meal flours (King Arthur Flour carries both) for part of the flour, added chopped pecans, finely chopped fresh pineapple, finely chopped banana, and chopped, pitted dates. What I ended up with were some of the best pancakes ever if you like tropical flavors.

It takes a few minutes to chop up the fruit and nuts, a few more to mix together the milk or soy milk and the yogurt, a few more to measure out the dry ingredients, more to melt the margarine or butter and mix it with the eggs and then the milk mixture. Hardly any time is needed to add the dry ingredients to the wet and barely mix them.

Cooking the pancakes probably takes the most time and that may just seem that way since you are standing at the stove with a pancake turner, watching the tiny bubbles form at the edges of the pancake and smelling the warming pineapple and banana fragrances. Then when you turn the pancake over, you see the golden brown sheen of the cooked side and you see the pancake rise and you know this is going to be soooo delicious! And it is!

I topped mine with some applesauce, but you can just as easily slather on some butter and syrup or mix up a syrup of sugar, water and orange juice, letting it bubble and thicken while you cook the pancakes. However you top them, enjoy the flavors of the islands.

Tropical Pancakes
based on Plain Pancakes and Buttermilk Pancakes by Marion Cunningham
in The Breakfast Book

2 eggs at room temperature
3/4 cup milk or soy milk or soy creamer, at room temperature
1/4 cup plain yogurt
4 tablespoons butter, or margarine, melted and cooled slightly
3/4 cup white whole wheat flour (or use regular whole wheat)
1/4 cup Irish Whole Meal Flour (or use regular whole wheat)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup fresh pineapple, finely chopped
3/4 cup fresh ripe banana, finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped pecans
2 tablespoons finely chopped pitted dates

Beat the eggs in a mixing bowl until they are fully blended. Add the plain yogurt to the milk or soy milk and beat until combined. Let sit a few minutes, then beat into the eggs. Add the melted butter or margarine and beat until filly blended.

On a piece of waxed paper or parchment paper or in another bowl, combine the flours, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir into the wet ingredients and stir just until blended. Immediately gently stir in the pineapple, banana, pecans and dates.

Cook the pancakes on a lightly greased preheated skillet or griddle: scoop 1/4 cup of the batter for each pancake onto the griddle, using the cup to slightly spread the batter if necessary. Let pancook cook over medium heat until bottom is golden brown and the edges have rapidly breaking small bubbles. After flipping the pancake over, let cook until bottom is golden brown. Serve at once with toppings of your choice.

Makes enough pancakes for 4 people (usually).

Pancakes and Berries

The big, fat olallieberries are almost finished and with the heat starting up today by tomorrow or Sunday they will all be overripe or dried up.

That was certainly an incentive to pick a few baskets of them to take to the trainers at the gym and a few more baskets to use here at home. I even froze a basket full on a cookie sheet, then transferred them after they were frozen to a storage freezer bag for later use.

One of the great things about them is that they are ready to use after being picked...just a quick rinse is needed. We also have strawberries from our garden (a few) and from the roadside stand on Hwy. 12 (a lot) so on Monday morning I made pancakes from the Joy of Cooking cookbook, changing it a bit to make it dairy free and to use some whole wheat flour. About a half pint of the olallieberries went into a pot with an equal amount of sliced strawberries and some brown sugar and water to make a sauce. It simmered away while I made the pancake batter and chopped some walnuts.

Because I was a little short of the needed amount of soy milk, I added some yogurt (yes, I know it is dairy but for some reason I can tolerate yogurt), so I also added some baking soda to the dry ingredients. That made for tender, delicious pancakes that became nice and puffy as they cooked. Each pancake had about a half dozen fresh olallieberries plunked on after I put the pool of batter in the pan. When the pancake was turned to cook the other side, those berries were cooked, too.

So to serve there were two good sized pancake with berries embedded in them, a topping of more fresh olallieberries and strawberries, a good dollop of the berry syrup, including cooked berries, and a nice sprinkle of chopped walnuts. It was amazing! Nothing else was needed. The pancakes soaked up the sweet-tart berry juices and the walnuts gave it all a little crunch. You could also use blueberries or raspberries or any combination that pleases you...peaches and blueberries anyone? Summer fruits really get the creative juices flowing.

Happy summer! Don't these look delicious? The syrup really added another dimension.

Wheat Pancakes with Berries
based on recipe in Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon lemon zest
2 eggs, slightly beaten
3 tablespoons melted butter or margarine
1 cup milk
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1 pint fresh olallieberries, rinsed and drained
1 pint fresh strawberries, rinsed, drained and hulled, then sliced
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped
Berry Compote (recipe follows)

In a large bowl combine the flour, whole wheat flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.
In a small bowl rub the lemon zest into the sugar until the sugar looks damp like sand at the beach. Combine this sugar with the dry ingredients.

In another medium bowl combine the eggs, melted and cooled butter or margarine, milk, and yogurt.

Combine the wet mixture with the dry mixture, stirring only long enough to dampen all the dry ingredients. This short mixing will make the pancakes more tender.

Heat a cast iron skillet or griddle or heavy bottomed skillet over medium high heat and grease lightly with butter or margarine. When a water drop sizzles, use a 1/3 cup measuring cup to ladle batter onto the cooking surface, spreading it with the cup if needed to make a pancake about 4-5 inches in diameter. Place 5-6 olallieberries on each pancake circle. When the small bubbled begin to burst around the edges of the pancakes, use a spatula to look under the pancake at the edge. If it looks golden brown or browner, flip over with the spatula quickly so that the berries stay with the batter.
Cook on the second side for a few minutes until a peek under shows that the pancake is browned on both sides.

Serve at once with the berry compote, fresh berries and a sprinkle of chopped walnuts.

Berry Compote
In a small saucepan combine 1 cup olallieberries (or blackberries or blueberries), 1 cup sliced strawberries, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, and 1/4 cup water. Cover and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 2 minutes, then remove cover and simmer until syrupy. Watch once cover is removed and stir as needed to keep fruit from scorching. Serve with pancakes, waffles or over ice cream or yogurt.

No More Bisquick

I'm really not sure when it happened. For many years I know I made pancakes from scratch. After all, I have my Mom's recipe and if I get bored with that (although that is hard to imagine) I have Fanny Farmer and Joy of Cooking and Marion Cunningham to name a few places where I am sure to find a killer pancake recipe. Still, at some point I turned to the ease of Bisquick and sort of lost track of making plain pancakes from scratch. It may have been because Max loved pancakes and he could make them himself if there was Bisquick on hand. The mix makes OK pancakes, but they tend to be light on flavor and heavy in texture.

Recently I discovered that whenever we last used the packaged pancake mix Bisquick (and it must have been a while ago because I don't remember using it up) the box was emptied and none was bought to replace it. So I pulled down my copy of Classic Comfort Foods and whipped up a batch using Mom's tried and true recipe. What a difference. These were so flavorful and had a great texture...tender and a bit eggy and not to dry and cakey. I made the batter and Sweetie cooked them in the cast iron skillet and we served them with apple that I had cooked in water with a bit of cinnamon...plus a splash of real maple syrup. Just wonderful!

Pancakes

1½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar
1¾ teaspoon baking powder
1 or 2 eggs, lightly beaten
3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 cup milk

Sift together the dry ingredients. In another bowl  combine the egg(s), melted butter and milk.

Quickly, with a few strokes, stir the wet ingredient mixture into the dry mixture. If too thick, add up to ¼ cup additional milk. Lumps are OK.

Ladle batter on a hot, greased griddle. Turn when small bubbles appear around the edges. Cook until second side has browned. Repeat until batter is used up.

Serves 4 - 6.

Cakes in the Morning

A good, well-made plain pancake is a delight. Gilding the lily with blueberries is common, but then adding cooked bacon and chopped pecans is not. You might want to try it...the combination is amazing! Sweetie claims they are the best pancakes ever.

Blueberry Bacon Pecan Pancakes
based on a recipe for plain pancakes in The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham

1 egg
2 tablespoons water
5 tablespoons butter
1 cup milk
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt (I used 1/2 teaspoon since the butter was salted)
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup cooked, chopped bacon
1 cup (about) fresh blueberries, rinsed and dried

Whisk the egg with the water. Set aside. Melt the butter over low heat in a small pot. When melted, add the milk, stir to combine and let cool. When cool, whisk in the egg mixture.

In a large bowl sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir in the chopped pecans and bacon. Add the butter/milk/egg mixture and stir until just combined. If too thick, add a little more water.

On a preheated, greased skillet or griddle, over medium-high heat, place enough batter for a 4 -5 inch pancake. Top with some of the blueberries, pushing the berries down into the batter a bit. Repeat to fill the skillet or griddle. When small bubbles form around the sides of each pancake, turn the pancake and let the berry side cook until dark brown. Remove pancakes to a plate as they finish cooking. Continue cooking until all of the batter has been used up.

Serve while hot with real maple syrup. We didn't need extra butter with these, but you could if you prefer your pancakes that way.
Serves 3 - 4.

This poppy self-seeded from last year...and it's a beauty!

Sourdough Pancakes and Winners

The winners of the Second Helpings cookbook giveaway are:
Ta da!! - Lady Wild, Donna of The Start of Something Frugal, and Cheryl. They will be getting an e-mail today and, once they send back a mailing address, will be getting their cookbooks directly from Thomas Nelson Publishers...to whom I give a hearty 'Thank you!' for this opportunity to share some great cookbooks.

An then there are pancakes....
We used to eat a lot of pancakes when Max was around. Of all the kinds of cakes, pancakes were his favorite.

He got pretty good at making them and I do think that it really helps to make them somewhat frequently. Since we make 'em once or twice a year these days the learning curve is steep each time...how thick or thin should the batter be?...what is the best setting on the stove to keep the pan at just the right temperature?...how much oil or butter does the pan need? Each time the first third to half of the batch gets made too thin or thick, gets burnt or undercooked in the middle until we learn again how to get them just right.

Sweetie was doing the honors yesterday on Max's birthday morning. I had made the batter using some of my sourdough starter but he wanted to cook them. It was hilarious getting to the point where it all came together. The pancakes were tender and just slightly sour...perfect with coffee and some warmed real maple syrup. I had thought to make a chocolate cake for the birthday, but I think Max would have liked these pancakes batter.


Sourdough Pancakes
Makes enough for 2-4, depending on how hungry you are and how many you mess up trying to find the right combination of heat and batter thickness.

2 cups sourdough starter (actually one cup starter, mixed with a combination of one cup all-purpose flour and 1 cup water, the whole whisked together and then set uncovered on the counter for at least 2 hours)
1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) butter, melted and cooled
1 egg
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoons sugar
about 1/2 cup more flour, but it might be more or less depending on how thick you like your pancakes

In a large bowl whisk together the starter mixture, melted and cooled butter, egg, salt, sugar and 1/4 cup flour. Let sit 10 minutes. If you like a thicker batter, whisk in more flour until batter is the thickness you like.

Heat a griddle or large skillet. If desired oil lightly or brush with melted butter. Heat over medium-high heat until a drop of water, dropped on the pan or griddle, sizzles on contact. Ladle on the batter. Some people like silver dollar size pancakes and some, like Sweetie, like huge pancakes that take up almost the whole pan...so use the amount you like to get the pancakes you like.


Cook until small bubbles form and break around the edges and bubbles also form in the center. Flip pancake over with flexible spatula to cook other side. Check after a minute to see if side in contact with pan is brown enough. When cooked as desired, use a spatula to remove from the pan to a an ovenproof plate and keep cooked pancakes warm in the oven (which has been set at a low temperature) or serve right away and continue cooking. Serve warm with butter and syrup or fruit.

Variations: For Blubes (Blueberry pancakes) Scatter washed and dried blueberries over pancakes as soon as you have ladled the batter on the pan or griddle. I usually then drizzle a little of the batter on top of the berries, too. That way you get a little batter between them and the pan when you flip the pancakes. If you prefer, you can gently stir 1 pint of washed and dried blueberries right in to the batter, then bake as directed in the basic recipe.

Other variations included other berries like strawberries or raspberries, dried fruit, sliced bananas, or chocolate chips instead of the blueberries.

Playing with Sourdough and Making Pancakes

Never thought of making a sourdough starter and learning to use it as a way to ward off dementia. Then I talked with my mom yesterday. She reminded me that learning new things and exercising the mind are good practices in keeping Alzheimer's at bay. Guess the whole process has been a true learning experience.

'Pancakes for breakfast' has always been a happy phrase. Now that my starter is there, just waiting to be used, it takes on a whole new meaning. For one thing, you need to start your batter the night before (or at least 3 hours before you cook the pancakes). Even though my brain was tired, I did remember to start the batter.

What I forgot the next day when I was mixing the rest of the ingredients in was that I also added a half cup of Polly so that I wouldn't have to throw it away when I was feeding her some more whole wheat flour. So in the morning I followed the directions as given on my recipe, but ended up with a very thin batter which made pancakes that looked like crepes! Seeing that, I whisked in a whole bunch more bread flour and tried again. This time the pancakes were just right...thick enough but not too thick. It wasn't until later that I remembered the extra starter and understood why I needed more flour...about a cup...to make the batter right. So playing with is the right term to use with sourdough when you are as forgetful as I am sometimes.

I served the pancakes with some butter, maple syrup, simmered apple slices with cinnamon, and a couple of pan browned frozen turkey breakfast sausages. The pancakes were light and flavorful and well worth the effort of starting the batter early.

Since these are made with a starter that has wild yeast in it, I'm going to send this off to Susan at Wild Yeast for the weekly Yeastspotting roundup. With two starters going, she will probably be getting one or more posts a week.

This sure is fun!

Sourdough Pancakes

(Not sure where this recipe came from...it was in a stack of recipes I'd printed out a while back. Very sorry I can't tell you whose recipe it is.)

1 cup sourdough starter - I used Sukey which is a thinner type of starter, plus 1/2 cup of Polly, also a thinner type of starter, just more whole wheat in it

2 cups water at room temperature

2 1/2 cups whole grain flour - I used 2 cups whole wheat and 1/2 cup spelt flour (then about 1 cup unbleached bread flour when the batter was too thin the next day)
3 large eggs
4 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup melted butter, cooled
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

3 to 24 hours before you want to eat, combine in a large bowl the starter, water, and flour.Make sure that you have plenty of room for this mixture to rise. If it is a very hot day, beware of leaving it too long...it will ferment very quickly. To make for breakfast, make this part the night before. The sponge should soak for at least 3 hours.

After the soaking period, add the rest of the ingredients, and combine well. A whisk works well. If you want thinner pancakes you can thin with water or milk. Drop about 1/4 cup of the batter on lightly oiled hot griddle over medium to medium-high heat. Cook until the top is set and the bottom lightly browned. Flip when small air bubbled form around the edges. Cook the other side until pancake lightly browned on the griddle side. Repeat until all of the batter is used, re-oiling the pan as needed. This makes a lot of pancakes...enough for 4 - 6 hearty appetites.

Server warm with maple syrup, butter, fruit toppings and/or whipped cream.

Heat Bound

When the blizzards come in the winter in the snowier parts of the world, people become snow bound...forced by the cold to stay home where it is warm.

During this past week, the heat has broken records around here in the North Bay near San Francisco, climbing each day near or past 100 degrees. Today we got out early and walked the dog and went to the hardware store, but once we got home I decided that I was going to be heat bound. The night cooled our concrete floor enough that the closed up main floor stayed cool through lunch time. Now the air conditioner is on, but at the Smart Cool setting. No baking today!

Instead of baking, I made some pancakes for breakfast, topped with perfectly ripe, juicy peach chunks. I added some nutmeg to the batter since nutmeg and peaches have a true affinity for each other. Since we had gone out early without breakfast, I decided that using the low fat biscuit mix to make the pancakes was OK...I was already pretty hungry after all the errands and didn't want to take the time to measure out a lot of dry ingredients. I used egg substitute and skim milk, too. Some rolled oats whirled in the blender to flour added a little fiber and gave the pancakes a nice texture. They were delicious with the peaches.

In the afternoon Sweetie and I hung the eight pieces of watercolor I've painted that I feel are worthy of being hung. Wednesday I matted and framed seven of them. The last one had been in the group show in the summer, so it was ready to hang. Today Sweetie added eye hooks and picture wire to the ones that needed it.

Here is how it looked as we began. The wall is the unbroken hallway wall that leads from the front entry to the living room.

Here is a shot taken after most were hung. These are closer to the front door.

Here is a shot taken of the group closer to the living room.

When there was only one left, I realized that the painting of my daughter would look better in the living room under a photo taken by her grandfather, so where that painting had hung we substituted a painting of a vista in fall. The view was from a photograph I took from a winery's deck, looking off over the Dry Creek valley in Sonoma County.

It's pretty heady seeing a wall filled with paintings I have created...and ones that I'm OK with hanging. I still think that they all are far from great works of art, but they are decent works, and I had fun making them.

It's supposed to be really hot tomorrow, too. Wonder what I can find to do to keep busy? If it turns out to be interesting, I'll let you know.