The Clever Badger I'm not dead yet!

1. 

   Steviepinhead
   April 1st, 2009 - 16:56

   Heh!

   Try this recipe, which is pretty much the same in both Fanny Farmer and The Joy of Cooking:

   Dry Ingredients:

   1 cup flour
   2 tablespoons sugar
   2 teaspoons baking powder
   1/2 teaspoon salt

   Wet Ingredients:

   1 egg
   2 tablespoons butter, melted (about 1/4 of a standard quarter-lb stick/cube)
   Milk – this is the only tricky part: you want at least 3/4 Cup, but not much more than a full cup, depending on how “thin” or “cakey” you want your pancakes.

   I measure the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl while the butter is melting and the egg and milk are standing by. As soon as the butter is melted (but not yet brown or smoking!), I pour it on top of the dry ingredients, crack the egg and let it plop in, then pour in 3/4 cup of milk. I just use a standard eating fork to stir — you should beat/whip/stir hard until all the dry ingredients are well-mixed, but you will still see a few small lumps of batter (not totally silky smooth, in other words, which is why you don’t need a whisk).

   If the batter still seems to thick and gummy, dribble in a LITTLE more milk, stir some more, etc., until the batter seems about the right consistency. With practice, you can adjust the “default” amount of milk upward to get thinner cakes.

   This yields about 18 – three to four inch cakes of medium consistency. Cook in a hot griddle or frying pan, lightly buttered or cooking oil-ed, maybe around 300 to 325 degrees or a bit more (adjust up or down with experience) – just hot enough to make a drop of water “dance” on the bottom of the pan. Cook side one until you see well-formed bubbles, then do a test flip of one cake to see if the bottom is light golden-brown. The second side doesn’t tend to take as long!

   Once you get this down, the mixing only takes five minutes. I make pancakes at least once a week, and used to have to turn out dozens for three growing pinheadlets. I always make it from ingredients, never from a mix or microwave (unless I’m backpacking, in which case I do use one of the better mixes).

   This recipe is easily halved or doubled, because of the predominance of halves and twos in the measurements!

   –Stevie

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2. 

   Steviepinhead
   April 1st, 2009 - 17:00

   Oh, and I use the standard two-cup/half-liter measuring cup to pour the batter into the pan from. These usually have a little pour-spout which helps keep things neat. So total clean-up consists of the mixing pan, the measuring cup and spoon, the fork, and the frying pan (in which you may have melted the butter — unless you’ve already cooked bacon in the pan; in either case, the leftover coating of melted butter or remnants of bacon drippings can serve as the “oil” for the first round of pancakes).

   Easy Stevie!

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3. 

   Clever Badger
   April 1st, 2009 - 19:53

   Root cause analysis indicates that the problem was that I allowed the frying pan to get too hot, which consequently cooked the exterior of the pancakes too quickly while leaving the inside basically raw.

   Live and learn.

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4. 

   Steviepinhead
   April 2nd, 2009 - 18:32

   Having determined the cause, it’s now avoidable in the future! (Especially if you experiment a little with the dancing-sizzling water drop test…).

   The rest of my comments were simply encourage you NOT to alow this one bad experience to condemn your cubs to preservatie-laced microwave pancakes forever!

   Of course, you are in the best position to judge the adequacy of your cubs’ overall nutrition. No value judgments are intended, beyond my advocacy for the superiority (and fun!) of this one food item — “from scratch” pancakes over the microwaveable version.

   Disclosure: I neither own stock in microwaveable pancake suppliers nor, as far as I am aware, in fresh-ingredient suppliers. I have no monetary interest in the outcome of your nutritional decisions whatsoever! :=)

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5. 

   Clever Badger
   April 2nd, 2009 - 19:36

   Nah. I’ll try again. I just had to let the smoke clear first…

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6. 

   Steviepinhead
   April 3rd, 2009 - 16:20

   That’s okay, CB.

   Vent all you want!

   I certainly don’t mind (though you may mind bad puns…).

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