Your favourite pancakes?

[Bondbug 32]

I could not find a thread on this very basic topic

 

I see lots of mentions of 'pancakes' in this forum, in a variety of contexts. So what is your favourite with pancakes? How do you make them? How do you eat them?

 

My own preference is pretty boring...ordinary English pancakes (flour, water, egg), about 9inches diameter, not too thin (I.e. fairly substantial - not French 'crepes'), squeeze of lemon juice, sugar, rolled and 'hoyed doon the gob', preferably four to six at a sitting.

 

So what does 'pancake' mean to you? What are your favourite pancakes, what flour, what flavour, what spread, flat rolled or stuffed?

 

Do you toss them?

[Silearth 6]

I am pretty adventurous for most foods, but quite a purist for some. Pancakes fall under the second category.

 

The basic recipe for me, cooked in a bit of butter and served in a stack of 3 with a pat of butter. No syrup or jam or other such topping(I do not like em) I may add a bit of cornmeal to the batter, but that is is as far as I'll go.

[Grillgrim 0]

Ohh the joy that is pancakes!

Well if I am feeling healthy then I will make oatmeal pancakes with cinnamon added to the batter, topped with fresh sliced strawberries and blueberries.

 

The classic batch with added baking powder, vanilla extract, and lemon juice makes them light, fluffy, and ohh so yummy.

 

and of course the ultimate. Whole wheat flour batter with mashed up bananas and walnuts. Let it sit overnight in the fridge, give it a good stir and cook on a hot griddle with butter. Top with butter and syrup. Pancake coma to follow. Seriously I eat those ( 8-10 ) with a tall glass of milk and fall asleep for another two hours. I think I know what is for breakfast tomorrow.

[Bondbug 32]

The classic batch with added baking powder, vanilla extract, and lemon juice makes them light, fluffy, and ohh so yummy.

 

and of course the ultimate. Whole wheat flour batter with mashed up bananas and walnuts. Let it sit overnight in the fridge, give it a good stir and cook on a hot griddle with butter.

 

That sounds good to me despite being a confirmed traditionalist like Silearth. My wife is a bananaholic so I will pass that on.

 

P.S.

? where is the 'yum-yum-that's-good' smiley ?

? and where is the smiley that celebrates by drinking milk ? I would go along with that.

? and where is the smiley with the chef's hat for this forum ?

[Bondbug 32]

Double posting, but my wife suggested a recipe that Grillgrim might enjoy.

 

Crâpiaux du Nivernais

 

A simple 'pancake' recipe, with apple and rum.

 

Stage 1

Apples "à pulpe ferme", I.e. which do not go into a mush when cooked.

Rum

Sugar

 

Peel and core the apples, cut into fine slices, put them in a bowl, sprinkle with sugar and "arroser" with rum (sprinkle/pour over I suppose. One of the first French words I ever learnt was l'arrosoir = the watering can.) Don't drown them.

Leave it for at least an hour.

 

Stage 2

Prepare your normal flour/egg/milk/sugar/(salt) pancake mixture

Let it stand till the apple is ready.

 

Stage 3

Carefully add the rum soaked apple slices to the pancake mixture

 

Stage 4

Cook ... make the pancakes thick enough to cover the apple slices

 

Edited September 5, 2009 by Bondbug

[wintermane 0]

I like pancakes made with cinnamon and brown sugar...

 

Also like to sprinkle bits of andes mints some rollos and health bars on em and microwave em for for a bit to melt it together.

[D-molisher 9]

Try instead off using water / milk...

Replace ½ off wet stuff with a dark ale, wow that makes a nice difference in how they taste.

Ya moms secret trick.

 

Well mostly I eat mine with:

chokolate sauce

a few roated allmonds or other nuts

a little ice

½ a banana or a 1/4

 

 

Well I am craftsman and usually lay around 5 tons a day , 4½ day ...

Soo unless I consume around 6 k - 9 k calories a day, I get under 60 kg. ( hight 169 cm )

Edited September 6, 2009 by D-molisher

[gogoblender 3,070]

lol, bond, I think you made dmol a very happy person with this thread. Lord knows, I`ve had heard him trundle off to his kitchen in middle of games often enough to be jealous of what he`s putting together in his kitchen

 

My favorite pancakes ?

 

Any kind

 

My family actually never made them. The first and only times I had them when I was growing up was when me and my brother used to have to go over to a neighbor`s house for lunch times... and yeah, sometimes for lunch, they`d treat us to pancakes with real maple syrup. There were two ladies there who would cook for us... The grannie of our friend Scott and his mom. Interestingly enough, both of them made pancakes completely different...one with a mix from the box, the other with home made batter. One fluffy, but processed...the other flat, but chewy. One with golden griddle syrup, the other with the best maple.

 

Good memories, and pancakes still have a place in my heart whenever the mnemonic is triggered by the smell of frying butter. I`m a sucker for these treats, if any of you make èm, make sure I don`t know your address.

 

 

gogo

[Bondbug 32]

My family actually never made them. The first and only times I had them when I was growing up was when me and my brother used to have to go over to a neighbor`s house for lunch times...

 

gogo

 

Hey man. You shock me to the core

 

Pancakes are the easiest, quickest feast there is. Chuck the stuff in a basin, stir it up, slap it in the pan, toss it, scrape it off the ceiling, maple syrup (for you), roll it. Yum and it's gone. That's why you make them in numbers.

 

Get moving ole pal, you are slipping! Even I can make them.

[gogoblender 3,070]

Sounds like a challenge!

 

hmmm, let me think then...

 

My next door neighbor, Peggy, who's 94 and always looking for company ...maybe I can finagle her to put together a stack of pancakes for me!

 

 

gogo

[Bondbug 32]

Sounds like a challenge!

 

hmmm, let me think then...

 

My next door neighbor, Peggy, who's 94 and always looking for company ...maybe I can finagle her to put together a stack of pancakes for me!

 

 

gogo

 

F - E - E - B - L - E my friend. And as for the assumption that only old folks can make pancakes....D - I - S - G - U - S - T - I - N - G.

 

I have read all (well some of) your posts which show incredible imagination and initiative. You are surely not going to be beaten by a simple pancake. OK. Watch Peggy and see how it is done.

 

As for your young neighbour Peggy - give her my regards, and regrets for the poor cooking ability of her neighbour. I might just propose marriage next time I am over.

 

P.S. Nice name Peggy, and interesting - it is one of the variations for Margaret I think. Ask her.

 

xxx - those are for her not you.

 

P.P.S. Make sure it is not crepes that she makes, I had forgotten what sort of place you live in.

[Llama8 8]

Like Bondbug I prefer "normal" English pancakes, a bit more robust than the continental (ie French) versions, but not so thick that they could be used for housing materials (American). Though I'm not adverse to the odd crepe if they happen to be on sale in the street (the town I used to live in had a French market every month or so, complete with Cheese, sweets & crepe stands).

[Genenut 8]

Gogo, pancakes are EASY ... Heck pick the right supermarket and you can buy frozen ones you can microwave ... *lol* cant get much easier than that

 

and instead of syrup try them with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top... WE have them for dinner some nights... cheap easy and can make enough to fill a bottomless teenager quickly ...

[Bondbug 32]

Gogo, pancakes are EASY ... Heck pick the right supermarket and you can buy frozen ones you can microwave ... *lol* cant get much easier than that

 

DISGUSTING. A bloke like Gogo would never stoop to such practices. The great hands-on man, full of imagination and er.... er.... well er... full of them anyway, in the kitchen. Don't encourage him to be lazy. Poor old Peggy next door having to show him how to deal with frozen pancakes. Have you no consideration Genenut!!

 

Quite so Llama. I think my main objection to crepes is the ridiculous prices they charge here for them, for a bit of cooked tissue paper with jam on.

 

Haway man Gogo get the frying pan out, we'll be round your place any minute now. I'll bring the lemons.

[chattius 2,526]

Potato-pancake

 

If you ask any older person in my area about Pfannkuchen (pancake) all of them will think about potato-pancakes. Corn (I learned that corn is always the mainly used corn in a region: wheat, barley, maize, rye,... ,dependant on where you are the farmers name their main local corn plant always corn) was not really getting ripe in our mid mountain range and so potatoes were way more common in the times before the railroads or cars came to the hills. And instead of doing the normal pancakes with flourm potatoes were used.

 

So one of our family favourites are potato-pancakes with Sauerkraut, which we invented accidently. We planed to do normal potato-pancakes at a saturday, when we noticed that both of our older daughters invited some friends for dinner not knowing that the other did so too. Since we are a big family with 5 kids we have normally more than enough for dinner. But doubling the number of persons forced us to improvise:

 

We took the normal potatos, bear garlic and other saisonary herbs, eggs, onions, spice and added: Sauerkraut (we make it ourself, so we had 5 50 litres barrels of it in the cellar)

 

Somehow everyone said that it tasted way better this way. The long fibres of the Sauerkraut allowed the oil to drop out from the pan cakes. So now we always do it the new way.

 

We smear Apfelkraut on the hot pancakes. Apfelkraut is close to apple-butter. We make it on our own too, every apple, pear, quincy which was not picked from a tree but fall down is made to Apfelkraut.

 

There is only one problem with potato pancake and 5 kids: I have an old coal hoven and a really big full iron pan (50 centimetres in diametre): but I can never do more than 8 pancakes at a moment. So the kids always come to see if I am finished and get one of the already made. By the time I am finished with the last pancake, all the kids are satiated already and I find myself alone at the dinner desk. Stupid pancakes, even they are really tasty, they are not made for 5 kids who are still quickly grewing and always hungry.

 

So I prefer Dulges. Another local traditional food, but if I am done with baking it, everyone eats the same time at the desk. I like it when I see that our 10 person desk is full. You take the same as for potato-pancake but add some cut Blutwurst (blood sausage? or black pudding is similiar if you take meat as a filler) and cut Mettwurst. And instead doing single cakes you put all together in the pan. You mix from time to time so all gets crispy.

 

We do everything to make the german food more feared than the english one.

Edited December 16, 2009 by chattius

[Bondbug 32]

This one slipped by me Chattius - sorry. I think the most fascinating contribution so far! And better when tied to a good story. Gogo does this a lot.

 

I think the Irish have potato pancakes as well. Sure I have seen this somewhere. Potatoes are staple in Irish cooking ... I just can(t place the references for the moment.

 

We don't have savoury pancakes often enough, though the French have "galette"s made with buckwheat flour.

 

We've been having quite a lot of pancakes recently - so easy and so quick when you are looking for a snack.

 

You got them sorted out yet Gogo? Hope your friend Peggy is still going strong? Us young 'uns gotta stick together.

[Rotluchs 82]

for the sweet variations:

'dough': eggs, milk, salt, (vanilla)sugar and/or cane sugar, flour (mix of superfine wheat flour, and spelt-wholemeal)

'stuffing': either classic = marmalade(orange jam), or mountain cranberry, red currant jam, vanilla ice-cream with hot chocolate sauce, chestnut+whipped cream

 

 

for the non-sweet variations:

'dough': almost same, no or at least less sugar, more salt, maybe pepper, etc... hacked chive, parsley etc..

'stuffing': either spinach+fresh curd, 'pumpkin'*, fish , turkey or canard, mince/ground meat (mutton or veal, I dont like pork), potatoe, etc...

(*not those that look like the halloween pumpkin there are others you can actually cook&eat.. very tasty)

 

for all of them, I like them 'rolled' instead of flat+stacked..

it may also take some time to find the best mix of the ingredients so that you can make them as thin as possible, they sometimes taste horrible if they get too thick..

start with a little more viscous 'dough' pouring into the pan, if it's too much you can use some more water or milk for the next one.. butter/oil also may help (not too much tho)

 

we call them Palatschinken in austria btw...

Edited March 19, 2010 by Rotluchs

[Bondbug 32]

You seem to have given the complete guide here, but "Palatschinken"?

 

I can't find "palat", which does not appear to be related to "palate" as I would have thought, or mouth or taste, and Schinken does not appear to have any relation to food. OK, I don't speak the lingo and my dictionary is very out of date!

 

"Palatschinken"?

Edited March 20, 2010 by Bondbug

[Rotluchs 82]

haha, I'm terribly sorry for that missing link then..

 

hmm.. I guess in the end, the german word ''Pfannkuchen'' which you can literally translate into the english terminus ''pancakes,

describes how they are made, in the end.. most of the times I guess in a pan (en) = Pfanne (ger)

 

 

''Palatschinken'' is no real 'german' word as such, the second part 'schinken' (ger) = ham ? is also missleading here..

after you read the small paragraph below, however you will know that 'Palatschinken' or the words it derived from, unlike the english pancake or german Pfannkuchen, more describes what it looks like (flat, and like a cake) instead of how it is made (in a pan)

 

the word we have here in austria, Palatschinken,

first of all is more like a 'borrowed' term, from the Czech word "palačinka"

which is again borrowed from the Hungarian "palacsinta'' ,

from where it can be backtraced to the Romanian ''plăcintă'' (a cake, pie) ,

where it finally derived from the latin ''placenta" = a flat cake (food made of dough)... hmm..

but even back then, could be it's ultimately a word of greek origin..

 

 

tbh, sure it is one of the more funny* german/austrian words, but neither did I ever thought about where it came from nor what it could mean.. until now

 

(*if I say it over and over again, it sounds very funny, at least ..it could be some sort 'tongue-twister' = Zungenbrecher (ger), meaning difficult to pronounce it right, for some people..)

 

 

I know.. wiki and such.. isnt always right about stuff or , stuff missing..

 

but it just was the first article that popped up about ''Palatschinken'' in english.. :

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatschinken

Edited March 20, 2010 by Rotluchs

[Bondbug 32]

That word build is fabulous. I thought you should offer it in the "German word of the week" over on Sacred. I think "User" would love it.

 

As for "placenta" ... as you say ... hmmm!

[Rotluchs 82]

*gg* well maybe I was thinking about something else there too, at first^^ but in fact I just edited the paragraph afterwards, it was more related to the last line /sentence..

because placenta does sound like latin to me, but I can't hear the greek in it, like the wiki says..

 

I still think pancakes are yummy, even now

 

 

edit:

I also have my very own personal, more imaginative explanation why they might be called Palatschinken:

 

while pancakes describes how they are made, and the wiki gives the impression Palatschinken described how they look like (at least the words it was 'borrowed' from),

 

I just think it describes the 'sound' of making pancakes ?

 

the first part "palatsch" could be "platsch" (ger) = "splash" or smth similar in (en)..

considered a verb, describing the sound of a piece of rock or a stone that is thrown/tossed into the water.. or in this case, some pancake-dough poured into the hot pan.

 

the last part might describe the fizzeling, sizzeling (en) = zischend (ger) sound

of the dough when it comes into contact with the hot oil and the pan,

the direct "evaporisation" from water into steam/vapor (gaseous)..

 

 

so, when you pour the liquid dough into the pan, it sounds like "platschinn" or "platsch-zisch" = splash-fizz (sort of)

which ultimately turned into the "Palatschinken" we have now

Edited March 20, 2010 by Rotluchs

[Bondbug 32]

How's about Schplatt and Sizzle? "Schplattsizzel" Even sounds vaguely German. You may even have invented a new German word ...

 

Hey there Gogo, how's about some Schplattsizzels for tea ... oh I forgot - He still can't make them.

[claudius 104]

Follow recipe on Bisquick box. Bisquick can make biscuits or pancakes I think it is flour with baking powder salt fat? (not sure on fat)... Then you add milk and egg to make pancakes....

 

My secret touch is blueberry yogurt which adds a tang and the berries. If possible additional blueberries.

 

Then the secret is to have real maple syrup which is made from the sap of maple trees...

[Rusto 0]

I could probably count on one hand the amount of times I've eaten pancakes in my life, but I do know that I like them with a bit of sugar and lemon juice.

[Scrappy McSlap 6]

This thread is killing me! Poor Peggy indeed... hahaha!

 

I love pancakes... I think I lived off of them almost exclusively for the better part of two years back when I was more poor than I am now har har (thank god for vitamin fortified food, eh?)

 

Want to know what pancakes I hate? Pancakes with ham and cheese in them... just.... wrong. You get the greasy ham thing going on with the greasy cheese thing, and that kinda fried cheese taste... just no good at all! It's the mixture of textures that kills it for me. I mean, I love cheese and all (especially melted cheese), but I think it's the ham chunks that does the whole dish in.

 

Pancakes that I like? Typical english pancakes are fine, with a bit of butter, peanut butter (smooth, not crunchy) and some maple syrup on top. Soooo tasty!

 

Looks like this:

 

 

 

Potato Pancakes are awesome! Some people here in Canada like to call them "Hash browns", but I've always thought hash browns were smaller chunks of potato with other stuff mixed in... so I don't think Potato Pancakes and Hash browns are the same, personally. Potato pancakes are a traditional Jewish food as well, called Levivot in Hebrew (although I'm pretty sure that means any old pancake, not specifically potato). They're like a Hanukkah staple. Just more random info...

 

Did I mention that I love this site? Not very many gaming forums out there where you can find so many people that appreciate so much of the same off-topic things. The awesome sense of humor in here helps too! You guys rock!

Edited May 21, 2010 by Scrappy McSlap