We're celebrating my husband's birthday this weekend. Since he's married to, well, me, as you might expect, he's a man who appreciates good food. So I wanted to treat him this morning to a brunch of toasted pecan pancakes topped with some of the amazing caramel sauce my brother made for Christmas. Now, there are a gazillion pancake recipes out there, but here's the basic one I use:
Z.D.'s Basic Pancakes
(easily adaptable for fillings, flavorings, and - apparently - errors)
Ingredients:
1 Cup whole milk
1 Tablespoon white vinegar
1 Cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
unsalted butter for greasing the skillet
Directions:
- Stir together the vinegar and the whole milk in a small bowl, and set aside for 5 minutes to curdle slightly. Set a large skillet over medium-high heat and monitor.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Crack the egg into soured milk and beat with the whisk until entirely combined. Pour into the dry ingredients, and gently stir until almost combined--you want it lumpy and with a few dry streaks.
- Once your skillet/griddle has reached 375º F, grease it with a film of unsalted butter and pour on your batter by 1/4 Cupfuls. Cook until pancake is puffed, dry round the edges, golden brown on the bottom and with a few bubbles on the top, about 4 minutes, then flip. Cook another 3 minutes or so, until the other side is golden, then serve hot with plenty of butter and real maple syrup. This will make you a total of 6 good-sized flapjacks.
If you mind your skillet temperature, these will turn out perfect every time. Why do I sour my own milk instead of purchasing buttermilk? Because the taste is the same, it's cheaper, and it's hard to find full-fat buttermilk with no weird additives, whereas it's easy to find organic whole milk from grass-finished cows.
But if you will refer back to the title of this post, it says: The Accidental Pancake Muffin. Which implies two things: a) there was an accident, and b) the result was a muffin. And both are correct. Let me walk you through my groggy Saturday morning in the kitchen, and see if you can spot the mistakes before I did.
First I poured my milk, and realized I only had 2/3's of a Cup. Not a problem, actually--I tossed in a drippy Tablespoon of white vinegar, then made up the difference in volume with half water and half cream. Seriously, I've done this trick before, it works just fine, and now I had a Cup of my souring milk. Mentally congratulating myself on my flexibility in the kitchen, I then measured two Cups of flour into a bowl, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/8 teaspoon of baking powder. I got out my skillet and my unsalted butter, stuck a couple plates into the oven to warm, put syrup on the table and started the coffee. Satisfied that my milk mixture had soured, I then poured it into my dry ingredients and began to stir.
Did you catch it? I didn't--not until I was busy stirring my batter and thought, "Huh...this is turning out waaaaay thicker than usual...." And then it hit me: I had doubled my flour. And there was no more milk in the apartment. And I was unwashed, still in my robe and slippers, and it was - I do not exaggerate - only 3º F outside. Nobody was going to run to the store just for some freakin' milk.
We had Tiger's Eyes for breakfast.* I'd like to say I rose to the occasion and whipped up something fancy and splendid and beautiful...but no, we had Tiger's Eyes and coffee. There wasn't even any fruit, which goes against my basic breakfast principles. However, being stubborn, flexible, and frugal, I wasn't about to throw out my batter, either. I wracked my brain to think, "What the heck does this resemble?!" It was too thick for pancakes, too thin for biscuits, and it would be too dense for cake. The closest I could think of was muffins. So I pre-heated my oven to 375º F and lined a dozen muffin cups with papers. Then I sprinkled a couple teaspoons of brown sugar over the top of the batter and barely stirred it in. I filled each muffin cup about 2/3's full, popped them in the oven, and set the timer for 18 minutes.
I expected them to stick to the papers--after all, there was neither butter nor oil in the batter, the only fat came from the milk and those couple spoonfuls of cream. I also expected them to be tough, because I'd had to stir a little more than usual. Finally, I expected them to be dense, because there was no way, I told myself, that scant amount of leavening could stand up to that much flour.
Will wonders never cease? They came out fluffy, tender, and they pulled away from the papers like a fresh stick of gum from a foil wrapper. Agog, I split one open and melted a bit of butter over the middle. I took a curious bite, and...pancake. It tasted exactly like a buttermilk pancake. I had - through a marvelous kitchen accident - invented the Pancake Muffin. And now I get to share the recipe with you.
Z.D.'s Pancake Muffins
Ingredients:
2/3rd Cup whole milk
1 Tablespoon white vinegar
2 Tablespoons full cream
2 Tablespoons water
2 Cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon white sugar
2 teaspoons golden brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1 large egg
Directions:
- Preheat your oven to 375º F, and line 12 muffin cups with paper liners (I suppose you could grease them with unsalted butter for more of a pancake-cooked-in-butter flavor, but I anticipate this might give you mildly crispy bottoms). In a small bowl, combine the milk, vinegar, cream and water, and set aside for 5 minutes to sour.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Once your dairy mixture has soured, whisk in the egg until thoroughly combined. Pour into the dry ingredients and stir just until combined. Spoon into the lined muffin cups - filling each about 2/3's full - and pop into the oven. Bake 18 minutes, or until the muffins are just hinting at golden around the edges. Serve warm with butter, jams, Nutella, or - best of all - whipped maple butter.
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| You can see there are a couple missing. That's because I needed to test one before I knew if they were any good. Then I needed to taste a second one to make sure the first wasn't a yummy fluke. You know how it is. |
*These are also called "Eggy in a Basket" or "Toad in the Hole." If you don't know what those are, don't worry, they're coming up in a later post. Also, you're probably not British.