Project Pancake Entry #4

Sweet Potato Pancakes

Source: A Real American Breakfast; modification to the Pumpkin Pancake recipe
Circumstances: Weather forecasters predicted Saturday would be a perfect end of summer/start of fall day: clear, sunny, 74 degrees. We didn't have anything planned until about 6 in the evening, so we were able to have a really nice, kind of lazy start to the day. I'd mashed up the sweet potatoes the night before, too, which made putting the pancakes together really easy. Ever since our breakfast in Boston I have been thinking about sweet potato pancakes, and these were really close to my memory of the Boston cakes. After breakfast we set out for an apple orchard, so we also have apple pie and apple cake and baked apples and possibly another Dutch Baby in our futures. Fall is yummy!

Ratings (* to ***** stars)
Ease of Preparation: **** provided you remember to get your sweet potatoes ready ahead of time.
Taste: ***** (lots of gingerbread spices in these cakes)
Texture: **** (between the buttermilk and the potatoes, this recipe makes a very moist cake, which isn't perhaps the ideal texture, but if you know that's how it will be it won't bother you)
Cora's Verdict: See photo above. She ate about 7 little pancakes.

Project Pancake #3

Recipe: Dutch Baby with Apples

Source: A Real American Breakfast
Circumstances: I have always wanted to make a Dutch Baby, but somehow never got around to it. I think I thought it involved using the electric mixer, which I hate to have to get out, but it really doesn't. So, here we are on the last Friday morning of the summer, the end of Cora's first week of daycare, and the day our deck will be finished! Seemed like a good day to make my first DB. Usually the DB is made plain and topped with sugar and lemon juice or preserves. We decided to first cook apple slices in butter and sugar, then pour the batter in over the apples. And I added cinnamon. It was really, really yummy, even though it may have been a tad overcooked on the very outer, upper edge. Still, we ate the whole Baby.

As the authors of Real American Breakfast note, though, it isn't really Dutch. If anything the more accurate name would just be German Pancake, but they also point out that this name is just not as cuddly. And we like our breakfasts to be cuddly, don't we?

Ratings (* to ***** stars)
Ease of Preparation: **** (The really important thing is that you leave enough time for the oven to properly preheat. Our dinosaur of an oven needs lots more time than I gave it.)
Taste: ***** (Chris said, "Now THIS is 5-star taste!")
Texture: ***** (Imagine having Yorkshire Pudding for breakfast, except it's a little sweeter and a little eggier.)
Cora's Verdict: ****** (Cora gives this breakfast an extra star because it is so delicious she ate almost a quarter of it herself! Also, who doesn't like pretending to eat a baby?)

Project Pancake Entry #2

Recipe: Great Harvest Bread Company Pancake Mix with blueberries

Source: Great Harvest in Linden Hills
Circumstances: Our favorite pancake mix is Trader Joe's Multigrain mix. But TJ's is not close enough for really regular shopping – we go about quarterly. So, we keep trying other multigrain mixes and most of them turn out to be a little too aggressively grainy for us. Still, when I see a new one, I want to try it. So yesterday I spotted a mix at Great Harvest Bread Company. Though the package I could see there were rolled oats in the mix and that looked promising. At $4.75 a bag (with maybe 4 batches worth of mix in the bag), it's a little pricey for regular consumption, but we all liked it. I put in blueberries, cause we like those too, and the latest ones a little tart for just plain eating. Cora discovered the joy of just sticking her finger in the cooked blueberries and painting on her tray (this is why we eat outside!). But she also ate her cakes (eventually) and we liked ours, too.

Ratings (* to ***** stars)
Ease of Preparation: ***** (Well, it is just a mix.)
Taste: *****
Texture: ***** (This is where many multigrain mixes fall short for us.)
Cora's Verdict: ***** (Frankly, it is hard to find a pancake which does not get a 5-star rating from Cora. )

Project Pancake Entry #1

Recipe: Fresh Corn Fritters

Source: A Real American Breakfast

Circumstances: Monday night we'd planned to have enchiladas, homemade refried beans, and corn cake...but the corn cake mix never made it into the basket. So instead, we picked up a couple ears of corn later in the week and decided to begin PROJECT PANCAKE with a savory pancake. I'd spotted this recipe for fresh corn fritters in All-American Breakfast when we were hatching The Project and it seemed like something that would go well with the chicken-poblano enchiladas. I especially appreciated how quickly the recipe goes together and cooks, since I had about an hour between when Chris got home with the jack cheese and then had to leave for a meeting and in this hour I had to finish the enchiladas, bake them, make the beans, make the pancakes, and have time for Chris to eat his dinner. It all worked out.

Ratings (* to ***** stars)
Ease of Preparation: ***** (Very easy – most time-consuming part is cutting the corn off the cobs and scraping the cobs, which really only took a few minutes)

Taste: ***1/2 (Way too much salt called for in recipe – will taste much better next time!You could tell they would be really, really yummy with less salt. And the variation with cheddar and bacon crumbles? I think that will be featured next to some scrambled eggs very soon!)

Texture: ***** (Really nice – good amount of corn kernels, the batter puffs up just enough)

Cora's Verdict: ***** (Apparently, nothing is too salty for Cora. She loved them the next day, too.)