If you separate the eggs and beat the whites almost stiff, then gently fold them in, you have a great waffle batter (this is very close to MY family's favorite waffle recipe). Unless your iron is well-seasoned, you may need to add more melted butter, or brush the iron with same periodically.

Does anyone take the time any more to make waffles?

How many servings does this make?

Damnit, i've already made biscuits. That sounds good.

Waffles are one of my Sunday rotation breakfasts, its one of the few times in the week we can get together to eat.

And I have an excellent, ancient waffle iron that is da bomb.

I like waffles quite a bit, but my family doesn't make our own batter. Too many substandard waffles wear on a person.

I'll have to try this recipe; thank you for posting it. My pancakes haven't been turning out well lately.

this weekend’s Viable Paradise X Joyful Class Reunion

Aw, shoot. That could have been fun.

This looks a lot like the 'Camping Pancakes' recipe a roommate taught me lo, many moons ago now.

The differences: oil instead of butter, the addition of a dash of salt, and the fluid can be anything--buttermilk, milk, water...

Called Camping Pancakes because you would mix the dry ingredients and take them camping, adding the wet ingredients on site. I know from experience that you can forget the egg and still get a good pancake. (Actually, I know from experience you can do all sorts of dreadful things to this recipe and still get a decent result. This probably says equally dreadful things about my cooking, all of which are true.)

Will have to try your version, though.

I use a similar recipe with just a little bit of vanilla added in.

If you're looking for decadent pancakes, try these; original recipe from The Vegetarian Epicure

Cottage cheese pancakes

2 cups small-curd cottage cheese
2/3 cup flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
dash cinnamon
6 eggs, separated
oil for frying

Beat the egg whites until they can hold soft peaks, but are not dry. Mix the yolks, cheese, flour, sugar, salt, and cinnamon together until just combined. Fold the egg whites into the rest of the batter.

Oil a skillet and heat to medium heat. Drop large spoonfuls of the batter into the skillet and fry on both sides until golden brown and puffed up. This batter is very delicate, even when set, so make sure that your individual pancakes are no bigger than your spatula so they don't fall apart when you try to flip them. Serve immediately with sour cream and maple syrup, or other condiments (e.g. honey or fruit preserves).

This is much like the recipe I use as a matrix for "stuff-cakes" where you add various combinations as seem good at the moment to the batter from your supply of fresh, frozen, and/or dried fruits, and coarsely chopped nuts. occasionally a soupçon of nutmeg or cardamom or cinnamon will find its way into the batter, more often chopped candied ginger.

And yes, we are among those households who still bother to waffle around, though not as much just lately.

Aspiring writers? Pish. They survived VP X. They *are* writers!

(Plaintively)

Can non-aspirant-writers also have this?

At my house, we always used the standard Joy of Cooking recipe (vintage 1950s edition), which doesn't vary substantially from this one - skim milk rather than buttermilk, but that's about it. Dad worked out the proportions for a batch and a half of batter, which worked well for serving three voracious children and two adults.

He made some the weekend before I finished my vacation at home, with fresh local blueberries and raspberries. Delight.

Pancakes and waffles are the _best_ starter recipes for kids to help start cooking with. They usually love the whole process of mixing, pouring, flipping, then of course, eating.

Our place is usually the "it" spot for sleepovers, because I'll make "happy face pancakes" where I set out a bunch of fruit, nuts, whip cream etc and let all the girls decorate their pancakes.

Also, I've been known to sneak protein powder supplements into our batters to keep my vegetarians up on their proteins.

For some reason we almost never had hot breakfasts when I was a kid, except for the occasional scrambled egg, so I think of things like pancakes and waffles as exotic delicacies. Anyway, this looks like a pretty easy recipe (and easy to remember!), so maybe I'll give it a try.

Will the recipe hold up reasonably well to the addition of cinnamon and nutmeg? I seem to be entirely incapable of cooking anything without adding cinnamon and nutmeg, macaroni and cheese possibly excepted. (And even then I have to resist the urge to toss in some ginger. My relationship with my spice shelf is probably an unhealthy one.) This works reasonably well for cookies and cakes, but possibly less well for pancakes that are expected to take other flavors for additional sweetening.

Oh, please give my greetings to my VPX comrades!

Grins. Janet @ #14, my mother and I have very different memories of breakfasts when I was in high school. She remembers fixing bacon and eggs for me every day of the week; I remember Carnation Instant Breakfast (and I still have the cup to prove it).

This is an issue which will never be resolved.

"Non-aspirant writers" sounds like posthumous publication to me.

A big hello to everyone who made it to the VPX East reunion! I am holding down the fort for a GenConGoing husband and helping friends with move-in proceedures here, but I am spiritually with y'all.

Please note the world's smallest pancake recipe.

To Fade @ #15: I admit to not having tried this particular pancake recipe (or the separated-eggs waffle version), but my standard waffle batter ALWAYS gets a dose of cinnamon, plus either nutmeg or cloves. (And whichever of those two doesn't make it into the batter is added to the ground coffee just before brewing.) The resultant waffles are buttered and adorned with Grade B maple syrup (I love the intensity of flavor)...and if I'm feeling really nostalgic, between the butter and the syrup is a slathering of peanut butter.

Now, if you were going to use your stack of pancakes (or a waffle) as a base for a fried egg, I agree that cinnamon and nutmeg might be a tad out of place, but otherwise, I say go for it! ;)

I've been using the pancake recipe in the Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook for years now, which is very similar to this one except that it also substitutes oil for water and adds a pinch of salt and a little baking powder. I use milk that's gone off instead of buttermilk (this can be simulated in a pinch by adding a splash of vinegar to good milk, though I've never had to; one of the things I like about making pancakes is that it gives you something to do with milk that's no longer strictly drinkable). I also tend to make one mix of dry ingredients and one of wet and fold them together - the trick is not to overmix while avoiding large pockets of dry stuff.

One of the big secrets of making pancakes is that cooking surface matters. You want it flat and very hot - drops of water should dance and vanish. A griddle is ideal (I love my big stovetop griddle the goes across two burners, letting me do two pancakes at once), but a big cast-iron pan will also do in a pinch.

Avram at 2, this will probably serve up to 3 or 4 hungry people, and may even produce some leftovers then; I've fed 6 on a recipe 50% bigger, even allowing for some seconds and sacrificing the first, inevitably imperfect, cakes to the chef.

Carol Kimball @ #1: I still make waffles. Tonight we're having blintzes filled with cheese and smoked salmon for dinner.

!!"&$*"$! I need to get the salmon out of the smoker! (done, whew. No salmon jerky today.)

Anyway, I'm going to try Jim's pancake recipe, but I've been having really good luck with the Zephyr Pancake recipe in the King Arthur Flour Baking Book.

#5:Oh, Greg, don't tell me that you didn't know about it! (D'oh! Really sorry about that.) I was wondering where you were this weekend.

don't tell me that you didn't know about it!

(turns to Alice)

Greg: Alice, tell JC that I didn't know about it.

Alice: Why me?

Greg: Because he said he didn't want me to tell him about it.

Alice: That seems rather odd.

Greg: Yes, I thought so too. But he didn't mention any restrictions on anyone else telling him that, so could you do that for me?

Alice: Sure.

(Alice turns to JC)

Alice: JC, Greg would like me to inform you that he did not know about it.

(Alice turns back to Greg)

Alice (whispering): Anything else?

Greg: No, that appears to be his only restriction. I think I can tell him the rest.

Alice: Odd.

Greg: Yes, writers are that way sometimes. Some of them even invent imaginary people to have third party conversations for them.

Alice: Are you trying to tell me something?

Greg: No. No. Not at all. Just speaking hypothetically.

Alice: Good, because for a second there, I thought you were suggesting something about me.

Greg: Good heavens, no. Of course not.

(Alice is silent for a moment.)

Alice: Hypothetically speaking...

Greg: Yes?

Alice: Next time, could you imagine me with a 12d6 sword?

Greg: Sure.

Alice: Thanks.

I made pancakes earlier this week from the recipe from my Grandmother's Little Black Book.* It looks amazingly similar to Jim's. The decadent breakfast for this weekend was cinnamon vanilla french toast.

*Grandmother's little black book is a small moleskine book with recipes in her handwriting, her mother's handwriting, and her grandmother's handwriting. It's the treasure of my family.

Thank you, Jim, they're fabulous (and with blueberries, yow!). These pancakes twice in one weekend is cause for celebration, or possibly a commemorative plaque.

Greg, ack, I'm really sorry to have been cheated of your company! I think all the announcements were on Absolute Write. The only solution I can think of is to have another (widely-publicized) reunion in short order.

Fade Manley @15, Syd @20: yes yes yes to the addition of cinnamon to pancakes and waffles. I've been doing them with "three or four taps cinnamon" for so long now that when Dad makes waffles without them I have to remind myself that they're not /bland/, they're just not cinnamon.

Waffles aren't really any more effort than pancakes, are they? I've never found them to be. My electric non-Belgian two-waffle iron is one of the few kitchen implements I genuinely treasure, along with the griddle of pancaking and the one-serving-pasta pot. I have simple pleasures as far as food goes.

A friend of my family's once lamented that she couldn't make pancakes. My mother eventually found out that it was everything from not having the right mix to not being able to flip them in the frying pan. We set about teaching her pancakery and gave her her own brand-spanking-new griddle, because who wants to use a frying pan?
Waffles take more time than pancakes, since you can only make one or two of them at a time rather than four and up depending on the griddle. We currently have a waffle iron that's just... eh. Too thin of waffles, not crispy enough, wrong surface area.

#24: Wow, it didn't occur to me that we weren't all present and accounted for over at AW. I eventually just figured you, like Linda and Diana, were busy this weekend. Have to make sure you're in the loop if/when we do another one of these.

over at AW

Ah, no. I've been out of the loop for a bit now. I did start writing again recently, which is good. But the last couple months have just been weird.

#21: This recipe would only feed 3 to 4 hungry people if none of them were my children. That is a two-child recipe. On certain mornings, that may be a one-child recipe.
If I were making this I would cut the sugar to one tablespoon, as I like my pancakes barely sweetened. My favorite pancakes are cornmeal, made according to the "Joy of Cooking" recipe with fresh stone-ground cornmeal, which can be found at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts. There may be other places one can buy it, but I'm not aware of them. Stone-ground is important for the texture, and fresh is crucial for the flavor, since cornmeal goes off in flavor very quickly.
Marion Cunningham's "The Breakfast Book" is excellent for both pancake and waffle recipes, including a yeast-raised waffle; our standard waffle is her whole-wheat buttermilk, made with all whole-wheat pastry flour instead of the suggested half-white, half-whole-wheat. The recipe calls for three-quarters of a cup of melted butter. This can be cut somewhat; in fact, when we use the full amount we find butter oozing out of the waffles and collecting in the gutters of the waffle iron. It isn't really a disadvantage that the waffle iron is slower unless there's huge numbers of people eating, as it ensures that people are waiting for the waffles rather than the waffles waiting for the people. People stand up to waiting a lot better than waffles.
The spiced waffles with maple butter recipe given in "Epicurean Delight" (a biography of James Beard) is also good, and so are the cheddar-cheese waffles with bits of ham I used to make (leave the sugar out entirely), but for sheer carefree disregard of health I like the suggestion for adding bacon to waffles from "Joy of Cooking", in which the cook is reassured that he or she need not worry about the grease from the bacon, as the batter soaks it all up. Now, if you then deep-fried your bacon waffle, stuck it on a stick and dipped it in something or other you would have perfect county-fair food.

Waffles on a stick...I'm getting far too used to the Minnesotan idea that all food may be consumed on a stick, up to and including hotdish/casserole. Waffles on a stick just sound kinda tasty.

Your family, and Maia's are the only people I know to beat the eggs first.

Her family separates them, beats the yolks into the batter, and then folds the whites in.

When it works, it's great. When it doesn't, well the eag foam makes interesting lumps.

How, exactly - and I know I don't really want to know this - would you put hot dish on a stick? And would you fry it?

I have an old, cast-iron waffle iron, meant to be used on coals.

Griswold made the most amazing stuff.

Prompted by the question about hot dishes on sticks,

Ladies and gents, I give you. . .The Waffle Hot Dog!

This thing was a delicacy, and its creator's store had the catchiest ad jingle ever; I still find myself humming it once in a while.

#33: When I was young and we used the less-rich "Joy of Cooking" basic waffle recipe, we separated the eggs. I believe I even beat them with the hand mixer a few times. But how can folding-in the egg whites not work?
For those who are not familiar with folding:
Take one-quarter of your well-beaten whites (we used to beat to the point where they stand up in peaks that fold over a bit at the top, if you lift the beaters, though not while the beaters are still beating unless you enjoy cleaning egg white off your cabinets) and stir into your batter with reasonable thoroughness - you don't want to beat the batter, just stir.
Dump the rest of the whites on top, where they will sit in a large airy clump atop a puddle of heavy batter.
Take your wooden spoon or bowl-scraper-type spatula, cut through the whites and batter to the bottom of the bowl and lift the batter up and over the whites, finishing at the top with a sort of spreading motion, like smoothing icing over a cake. Turn bowl a quarter-turn. Repeat.
After a bit, you will no longer have a puddle of batter below the egg whites, but instead a lovely light streaky mass, sort of like folded-up sedimentary rock. It should not be homogenous, but there should be no huge deposits of egg white and no puddles of batter. At this point you cook it really quickly.
This is also the method for making a wonderfully light eggnog, except that in that case your batter is a mixture of egg yolk, liquor, cream and nutmeg, unless you plan on feeding it to your inexplicably-awake children, in which case you should leave out the nutmeg. Kids don't generally like nutmeg.

Sisuile @ 32

I thought waffles were finger food? That's how we ate them (topping of your choice: apple sauce, butter, honey/syrup, or a combination thereof). We were doing sourdough waffles, though, with a long lead-time.

8 to 12 hours ahead of mealtime
in a 2 to 3 quart bowl, mix
1 cup starter
2 cups water
2 1/2 to 3 cups flour (up to half may be whole-wheat flour, and it's delicious that way)

about 30 minutes before mealtime, add
2 eggs, beaten with
2 tbsp oil
and stir in 1/3 cup dry milk powder

when the griddle or the waffle iron is hot
mix together
1 tsp baking soda, lumps mashed
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
and stir into batter - it's going to foam up; this is why you're using a large bowl!

pancakes: use 1/4 cup batter per pancake
waffles: use 1 to 1 1/4 cup per waffle

You can put in some wheat germ with the flour, if you're so inclined; 1/4 to 1/3 cup is enough.

*waves to the VPX crowd*

Wish I could have been there. Eat a pancake for me!

Fade #15, you DON'T put nutmeg in your macaroni and cheese?

A dash of nutmeg is traditional in bechamel, and how do you get cheese sauce if you don't start with bechamel?

Mmm, nutmeg.

I don't put nutmeg in my mac and cheese, either. I do put mace in my chicken stock.
For the very creamiest mac and cheese, no cheese sauce. White sauce, hot; pasta, hot; cheese, grated - we favor cheddar and swiss, with a little American cheese for the texture. Put pasta in bowl, pour sauce over, dump cheese on top and stir. Stir some more. Then some more. The heat of the sauce and the pasta will melt the cheese, giving the whole the most marvellous texture. You may then bake it with crumbs on top if you must, though we never get that far.

Mmm. Waffles. (I like my basic store-recipe waffles topped with sliced Rainier cherries and honey, or cranberry sauce in November. Which, it might be added, is heavy on the cinnamon.)

I will add that any pancake mix should make a good waffle mix by doubling the fat (oil, butter, or margarine.) I have a lovely recipe that uses apples and cranberries and cooks up thick enough to stick in a toaster to reheat (don't laugh; when you're a college student without a microwave you notice these things.) This year I shall make up some for waffles and put some apple butter on top only so that I can eat lots without drying my mouth.

Rikibeth #40, I should specify that when I refer to making mac and cheese, I don't mean one of those delicious casserole dish types with fat noodles, a thick sauce, and crispy cheese across the top, like my mother used to make. I mean the kind that comes in a box. Probably even the store brand kind that comes in a box for twenty-five cents and turns out a very scary shade of artificial coloring orange. The kind that's likely to refer to the 'cheez sauce'.

I love baking cakes and cookies and breads, but I have absolutely no patience for cooking main meals. So the spouse grills salmon, I bake cookies with a few too many spices, and it generally works out.

Of course, now I'm pondering what it would be like if I tried adding a dash of nutmeg to the spouse's next "random macaroni and melted American cheese" variety of mac and cheese.

Terry, I do the separated egg thing. My recipe started from the Tassajara bread book, and has undergone modification.

2/3 c Whole Wheat Pastry Flour (Bobs Red mill is good) to:
2/3 c Milk
1 tsp baking powder to:
1 egg separated
x 2-4 depending on who's attending.

Also about 1 tsp salt, splash of oil, some of the 1/3 cup measure of brown sugar (to taste, depending on who's attending), cinnamon, nutmeg, cardomom, or whatever other spice I throw in.

Mix the dry, add the liquid (minus the egg whites), beat the egg whites and fold in.

These are good enough to eat without anything on them, with the fingers. Thought they're also really good with the appropriate Maple syrup.

I wish quite fiercely I was there with y'all. :) But I'm glad you're having a wonderful time!

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @ 18

*snort*
Got me! Spittle all over the screen.

That's pretty much our recipe, too. Those who don't use buttermilk should switch to baking powder instead of baking soda: one tsp baking powder per cup milk, one tsp baking soda per cup buttermilk.

We often add wheat germ, and almost always add blueberries (the little, "wild" ones, not the big ones) or thin-sliced, coarse-chopped apples. Yum!

If you have buttermilk, why not make some buttermilk biscuits for variety? Serve with butter, honey, jam, and/or frizzled ham with red-eye gravy.

I had cereal for breakfast this morning. *sigh*

Leftover oatmeal and leftover brown or wild rice go very well in pancakes, also. If you can get almond or hazelnut flour, try replacing half-a-cup of flour in any waffle recipe with the nut flour. Mmmmmmmmmm. The almond flour makes excellent scones, too; my favorite scone recipe is the basic one from the King Arthur Flour baking book, with part almond flour, dried sour cherries, vanilla and almond extract. I make a batch and freeze unbaked, then bake them as needed in the toaster over. Day-old scones are only fit for the undiscriminating.

Fresh-made pancakes or waffles were strictly a weekend treat when I was a kid -- I think my dad was the chef. Such feasts are *still* my prime memory marker for "gluttonous delight," more than ice cream, cake or any of the usuals (most of which I can't eat straight anymore, what with the allergy to milk fats). Proust's madeleine seems paltry, compared to a really good breakfast!

Confession: as a third-generation non-cook, I mainly read this kind of discussion for the virtual pleasures.

For those who are gluten-intolerant to one degree or another, my GF waffle recipe, the result of about two years of experimentation:

1/2 cup masa harina (without lime)
1/4 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
up to 4 tbsp soy flour (optional, adds protein, but more will change the taste, and not for the better)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar (or honey if you prefer, but waffles will brown more)
1 egg
1/6 cup canola oil
1 cup buttermilk less a smidgen (a full cup will generally make the batter too fluid)

Sift dry ingredients, then mix in wet ones. Turn on the waffle iron after mixing to give the batter time to bubble. Makes about six waffles.

This is our invariable Sunday breakfast. The tapioca helps make them crisp and light, with just the right degree of browning.

Yum.

Faren Miller @ 49 -- me, too. Nothing says decadence, relaxation, and fun to me quite like a long, lazy, big breakfast. Pancakes or waffles, bacon or sausage, eggs (I favor poached), coffee and tea, grits, biscuits (if no pancakes).

Alternately, the Polish version, with fresh-baked bread, herb cream cheese spreads, sliced cucumber and tomato, and at least two kinds of sausage, and quite likely some Polish deli ham without preservatives. And that tea that smells fishy when dry but has a lovely smoky flavor when brewed. (I have no idea how much of this is traditionally Polish and how much is just my best friend's family; I've only ever had it in the US.)

Ledasmom @ 34 I believe they take hotdish, wrap it around a stick, very quickly stick it in the deep fryer, and serve it with a side of cream of mushroom soup mixed with milk. It is very, very odd to watch, esp. if you come from anywhere else in the country where "hotdish" is generally refered to as "casserole".

The Minnesota State Fair- where you can get almost any food on a stick. Usually deep-fried on a stick.

PJ @ 36 - Ok. Now I know what I'm making next time I have weekend guests. Sourdough waffles? YAY!

In my house waffles were *not* a finger food. I have distinct memories of my parents' mantra- "take smaller bites, use your fork, stop playing with your waffle and eat it! You don't have to get syrup in every square!" Mom had an electric waffle maker that did four in a square, so one waffle was huge.

Which reminds me, need to put a decent waffle maker on the wedding registry. Whee!

Sisuile @#52

What kind of nutty parents did you have??!!

Of *course* you need to get syrup in every square. It's the raison d'etre of waffles!

At Alpha a couple weeks ago, I dragged myself out of bed every morning mostly for my waffle. It was dorm food waffle-- premeasured batter, electric waffle iron you turn, annoying beep beep beep beep after two minutes to tell you it's done-- but still. Waffle. Since everything was premeasured, I couldn't do much to get a complete waffle. After a few days, I began practicing wafflemancy: the shape and completeness of my breakfast gave me hints for the coming day.
Of course, since this was Alpha, all the days were pretty good. I mostly had fun interpreting the holes and occasional overflows. And, unlike reading intestines or cards, I got to eat my predictions.

#52: Oh, my god, I hoped it was a joke. I still choose to believe that it's a joke. It's like a perverted fritter. Incidentally, do they press in the deep-fried onions, potato chips or other hot-dish topping before dipping it in batter?
#53: You do not need syrup in every square of the waffle if you had the foresight to grate some semi-sweet chocolate finely (your blender is your friend) and sprinkle it into the squares, where it melts. Whipped cream is good on this.
#51: That Polish breakfast sounds wonderful to me. It sounds like it would go well with dark rye bread; is rye bread Polish, I wonder? I never had much luck making it. Sourdough dark rye with a good crust and a hunk of sausage, mmmmm. That cucumber salad with the dill and the yogurt and the garlic would go well with that.

Sarah S @ #53: And butter! A wee bit of melted butter in each square to help the syrup flow.

ObWafflemaking: perhaps those of you with waffle irons and strong constitutions would like to try Jimmy's shortbread waffles, as described at Orangette. It's worth looking at for the picture of the spheres of waffle batter resting gently on the iron. Yes, spheres. I take no responsibility for the gustatory dread that may ensue.

Bruce Cohen @46 - Well, good! By this we know you are aspirant. And expectorant. Hee.

Oh yes you DO have to get syrup in every square! Tania has the right idea.

Someday I will own a waffle iron. That day is not this one. (I'm told I need to frequent more yard sales.) But I do have a two-burner griddle, and the ability to not *entirely* burn the pancakes. That fog of smoke over the breakfast table only adds to the enjoyment, much like that little puff of peanut-scented air or whatever they supposedly introduce your amuse-bouche with at Moto's.

My god, those shortbread waffles look good - as dessert. If I consumed that much sugar in the morning I wouldn't move until about two o'clock, and even then, sluggishly. But the Dutch babies linked from that entry look delicious, sort of the ultimate evolution of the popover.
I wonder what those waffles would taste like if you put chocolate-hazelnut spread on them? And then topped them with whipped cream, and some slivers of toasted hazelnut and a bit of grated chocolate?

Linkmeister @17:

My mother and I have the exact same disagreement! I had the cup as well, but can no longer brandish it as proof. It vanished in some long ago move.

We're driving across the Deep South, and had breakfast this morning at Cracker Barrel. Grits, hash brown casserole, sausage, gravy, and biscuits. Quite different than the usual fare.

I've been making a variant of the cottage cheese pancakes for years, and it's universally acclaimed as the best pancake recipe ever.

The skepticism of the people observing the process for the first time is part of the fun, of course.

#50: Where do you get masa harina without lime? Would that be otherwise known as corn flour, or is there something that distinguishes it from finely-ground cornmeal?

Syrup in every square is important, but butter, real butter, in every square is overwhelmingly important. Without the butter, the syrup sort of jams up.

Bless you, Dave Trowbridge.

I haven't made pancakes since the eighties, and it didn't occur to me until I got to comment forty-something that I can't eat regular pancakes now that I'm avoiding gluten. It's a good thing, I suppose, since it means I'm no longer counting all the things I can't have.

But have you made a pankegg?

Text:
http://www.zefrank.com/thewiki/the_show:_02-27-07

or video:
href="http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2007/02/022707.html

Dave@50-THANK YOU!!-I have to cook for(on a fairly regular basis} a group that contains both someone with a wheat allergy and someone with a poultry allergy. This looks like a perfect treat to serve next time.
And count me in in the wafflers.
My favorite pancake recipe is for these corn ones from my sweetie's mother(who deep fried them)
Nolene's Corn Pancakes:
3 eggs,separated
3 Tablespoons flour
1 cup corn kernels(fresh,canned or frozen all work}
1/2 teaspoon salt
Separate the eggs. Place the yolks in a large bowl and beat lightly. Drain the corn-(necessary if using frozen or canned) and add to the yolks. Add the flour and stir well. In another bowl add the salt to the three whites and mix until stiffish. The stiffer they are,the lighter the pancakes will be,but you can do it by hand if you don't feel like draggging out a mixer. Fold the whites into the corn mixture gently but thoroughly. Cook on a preheated griddle.

I made these this morning. Tasty! Since I only had myself and one other to feed, I had to half the recipe. It was almost freakishly easy.

I gave my waffle maker to my brother because I hadn't used it in a long time. When I want waffles, I buy Eggos, but I don't put anything on them, I just toast them and eat them like that.

The place I buy whole grains from has a long catalog of gluten-free stuff, including pancake mix.

Marilee - Bob's Red Mill and Dark Horse Comics are the neatest things I know of in Milwaukie, Oregon.

I'm seriously considering making Jim's pancakes in the morning. If I can drag my sleepy self out of bed. I'm not a morning person.

However, the thought of eating leftover pancakes with peanut butter as a snack when I get home from work is providing a certain amount of motivation.

Tania (69): Leftover pancakes also make very good open-face toasted cheese sandwiches.

Mary Aileen @ 70... And if your name is Lisa Douglas, your pancake mix can be used to replace the seal to an engine's cylinders, as that episode of Green Acres showed. (She also made coffee so strong that a spoon could stand in it, but that would be going way further off-topic than even I am willing to go.)

I want a waffle now. Le sigh. Breakfast was a glass of white grape juice; lunch will be PB&J. I could have pancakes for dinner, now, that would be good.
Of course, now I associate breakfast with Alpha. Perhaps that is the true reason I desire enwafflement.

Mary Aileen (70): Cheese sandwiches? Are we talking 'slice of cheese, lunch meat, mustard' cheese sandwiches, or grilled cheese sandwiches with pancakes? I am trying to picture grilling cheese inside a pancake, and it's sort of boggling me.

My favorite use for leftover pancakes is in a nice standard PB&J setup, or something with jelly and cream cheese if I'm feeling up to the terrors of spreading cold cream cheese on a soft surface. I would guess that the cheddar cheese type would work best with pancakes that aren't too sweet or too spiced.

I had some very fine leftover pancakes while snow camping in the Desolation Wilderness near (maybe on) Lake Aloha. My dad made pancakes for breakfast and put the leftovers on an exposed rock in full sun. Then we went off to ski for the day. When we came back they were completely dry, crispy and sweet. We had them with jam.

Fade (73): Pancake, several slices of cheese on top, toaster oven. Toast until cheese is runny.

Mary Aileen #75:

What sort of cheese? Proper cheddar, or that stuff that's like a flat version of Velveeta? ("American," they call it. How insulting.)

(Not, you understand, that there are ever pancakes left over. Hmm, I just bought a whole bunch of maple-blueberry pork sausages as part of a store freebie, with some of them intended for a variation on bangers and mash. I think I know what Sunday breakfast is going to be ...)

Okay, that's it. I'm buying buttermilk on the way home, and making pancakes tonight. Enough to have with melted cheese for lunch tomorrow. I second the question about what kind of cheese works best; I'll probably go with colby-jack or medium cheddar otherwise.

joann 76: I'm not Mary Aileen, but I like a mild cheese on sweet bready things; the appeal for me is that sweet/salt thing more than a particular flavor. Not American per se, but Muenster, or mildish cheddar, something like that.

Which sends me in the direction of thinking about Portuguese sweet rolls, which is my favored melty-cheese substrate. Damn--too hot to bake yeasty things, too far from any Portuguese-speaking enclave. A pancake sandwich might just be the compromise.

76, 77: Colby and cheddar are both good choices.

Can ordinary milk (say, semi-skimmed) be used instead of butter milk? The pancakes sound very tasty, but I don't know where to buy buttermilk in the UK.

I'll trade a UK-style pancake (thinner, more like what I think would be called "crepes" in the USA) recipe if anyone would be interested.

dcb @ 80

It would work, but the flavor would be a little different, less sour, and the amount of soda might be a problem.

Wiki (yes, that place) has this:
In baking, regular milk can be substituted for buttermilk by adding 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar or 1 3/4 teaspoons cream of tartar per cup of regular milk. Allow the soured milk to stand for ten minutes before adding to recipes.

deb @ #80, from a "real" recipe site:

Ingredients:
1 cup warm milk
1 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions:

Combine ingredients well. Let mixture stand at room temperature until thickened, stirring occasionally. Use when recipe calls for buttermilk or soured milk.

This recipe for Buttermilk Substitute serves/makes 1 cup

For waffles, syrup in every square is very important. I also recently have begun appreciating a mix of maple syrup and fruit yogurt on top of my weekend waffles.

Going further back in time, pancakes were probably the first things I really learned how to cook on my own. My parents liked to sleep in on Saturdays, and I remember watching cartoons in the early morning with my younger brother and sister, and then making pancakes for them - Krusteaz brand mix, being good Seattlites. I was probably about 9 or 10, when that started. I made very green ones for St Patrick's Day one year - I hadn't quite appreciated the power of food coloring until that point.

linkmeister

close enough. Cookbook says two tbsp of lemon juice or white vinegar, not for uncooked use.

I generally use powdered buttermilk in pancakes and so forth. There is a slight decrease in fresh dairy taste, but you don't have to remember to buy buttermilk the night before.
We have tried the shortbread waffles (horrifyingly, Younger Son tried the shortbread waffles with maple syrup on them), and, though they are tasty, we prefer the regular Marion Cunningham waffles with the three-quarters of a cup of butter in them for putting whipped cream and fruit on. Shortbread waffles are too sweet, leading me to omit the waffle and have peaches with whipped cream, and then just lick out the whipped cream bowl.

P J Evans @81 & 84, Linkmeister @ 82:

Thanks - now I've got no excuse not to try it (next time we have the time for a leisurely breakfast...) By coincidence, we have a couple of eggs in the refrigerator that need to be used soon!

Krusteaz gets my vote for least appealing food brand name (and yes, we get Krusteaz mixes here in Georgia too).

Lila @ 87

Well, there's Pioneer baking mix in Texas. Not suitable for baking pioneers, though it isn't bad for quick breads.

Lila (#87): You could wash it down with some Pocari Sweat.

Then there's the issue of restaurant naming. "When you go to a restaurant, you should have their specialty. So at Waffle House, order waffles; at Chili's, order chili." "Man, I am never going back to Tony Roma's Ribs!"

Christopher Davis #89: "When you go to a restaurant, you should have their specialty."

Many years ago, my not-then husband and a friend almost got kicked out of an IHOP. The waitress had asked if they wanted toast along with whatever specialite de la maison they were getting. Friend replied in tones of high dudgeon: "If I'd wanted toast, I would have gone to the International House of Toast!"

joann @ #90, The International House of Toast would necessarily be about the size of a kiosk, I'd think.

Of course, at the moment I'm reduced to making toast in my oven, since the toaster's ground plug prong came loose and embedded itself in the wall outlet; the good news is that Black and Decker said (with a sigh), "send us the relevant part of the cord, we'll send you a toaster." I might patronize IHOT.

Linkmeister #91:

I made toast in my oven (broiler section, actually) for years, and then got enough scratch to buy a toaster oven. I have continued doing so for decades now, favoring DeLonghi, whose products aren't anywhere as flimsy as the domestic ones.

(I always hated my parents' toaster.)

What did you do about the wall outlet?

Gingerly removed the offending metal piece with non-insulated pliers, without even bothering to flip the circuit breaker.

In retrospect, not too bright, but I was mad!

Linkmeister #93: At least you're not like the genius I used to work with, who when one day the computer I was working at started emitting smoke and more heat than usual (for real), volunteered to run and go get water to throw on it. And then didn't understand why everyone else recommended against it.

ethan, The same instinct causes people to throw water onto grease fires on the range. Fortunately I was strongly advised not to do that in my youth, with anecdotal evidence provided by my mother.

#87--my uncle used to say that there were two food products he could never feel good about, simply because of the name--he was sure they were good and wholesome, but he just couldn't go there. One was Clabber Girl baking powder. The other was Griesedieck beer.

Apparently enough other people had difficulty with the beer that the company started selling it as Falstaff, instead--a name with convivial overtones, and none of the unfortunate suggestiveness of the founder's name, a good German surname that doesn't mean anything like what it sounds like to Americans, shame on us.

Clabber Girl is still in the stores, though.

Linkmeister #93:

Just the description gives me that weak-at-the-knees feeling I get when my rather erratic acrophobia meter gets triggered, frequently by proxy. Nice to know it's a general danger button.

It occurs to me that this thing was the ground part of the plug, so I may not have been risking as much as it initially appears. I'll defer to anyone with better electrical-fu than I, though.

Regarding German phrases that don't mean what they sound like:

I play on an online board game server. Much of it is in German. Now, there's a command on it called "ping". You can use the ping command to try to alert someone who might be away from their computer for a bit that it's their turn.

For the recipient of the ping, a window opens, with some sound effects, and a message...in German. Let's say that my handle is Zach, and I'm pinging popover28. The message then reads: "popover28, Zach sucht dich!"

Now, that just means "Zach is looking for you!". But sheesh.

Hearty agreement re "Clabber Girl". I also refuse to wear anything from "Dress Barn" no matter what it looks like. (And yes, I'd heard of "Pocari Sweat" but compared to other Japanese products it barely makes my weird-shit-o-meter twitch.)

Linkmeister #98:

You do have a point; in fact, I think it's probably responsible for your survival, now you mention it. Me, I'd still flip a breaker or something first, just because I might accidentally stick something into someplace a little more active. (That's called genuflecting in the general direction of Murphy's Law.)

I wonder to what degree people's dislike for "Clabber Girl" stems from a modern pasteurized-homogenized-purified sense of uneasiness about natural cultures. (That's where the name comes from, according to Practically Edible*: "'Clabber Girl' baking powder, made in Indiana, refers back to the time when to leaven something you would add baking soda to sour milk (aka clabbered or loppered milk) to produce a leavening reaction.") Sure, sourdough seems fine — at least it's baked and all the wild yeasties are killed — but "clabbered milk"? Eeeew.

Reconceptualizing can help; once you learn that crème fraîche used to be known as "clabbered cream", "clabbering" starts to sound rather less nasty.

* To tie this back to the Bad sources post, I have no idea how reliable Practically Edible is.

#102--The uncle in question grew up in a time and place (rural Missouri in the 1910's and 1920's) where clabbered milk was a fact of life--sometimes a useful one, and sometimes not, depending on whether you wanted cottage cheese or a glass of sweet milk; perhaps he had a deep-seated frustration with the lack of a reliable sweet milk supply!

I notice no one has taken on the issue of the beer.

The pancakes were nice! And filling.

Interesting exercise in US to UK translation - not just the "milk plus lemon juice and leave to stand" to substitute for the buttermilk, but the quantities, and "baking soda" = "bicarbonate of soda" NOT "baking powder".

Then there was working out how much mixture to put into the frying pan to make each pancake.

And watching them bubble! Our pancakes don't do that (but then, they don't contain bicarb. of soda).

A bit late, but thanks, I was just thinking last week that I would love to try a pancakes breakfast. Will have to try that (against all medical advices) tomorrow. Seems like I'll need that fuel to keep browsing through those eleven days of posts I missed.

dcb, how do you know the pancakes are flippable if they don't bubble?

Good pancakes; I made a one-egg batch for myself and boy, that was a lot of pancake. I think they'd be better with stuff in them, rather as straight pancakes-- there's so much pancake there, and it's such thick batter, that stuff might work even for weird-picky me. Then I had the unpleasant discovery that the batter doesn't keep the same way my family's recipe does, but I should have expected that.

>> Lexica writes: ...That's where the name comes from, according to Practically Edible*: "'Clabber Girl' baking powder, made in Indiana, refers back to the time when .... * To tie this back to the Bad sources post, I have no idea how reliable Practically Edible is.

Hmmm. The acknowledgements at the bottom of that page on Practically Edible where you copied your thoughts from http://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/clabberedmilk point to the Clabber Girl site, so presumably if Practically Edible is wrong, then the Clabber Girl Company doesn't know it's own history.... LOL.

This is just to say...

[no, no WCW pastiche here]

...that I have finally acquired a waffle iron of the electric Cuisinart sort (thank you Humane Society Thrift Store) and its instruction manual (thank you Cuisinart website), and I have tried the recipe referenced in Comment #1. The milk had an expiry date of 10/14/07 and came out of the carton lumpy, the egg whites were closer to "advanced frothy" than "almost stiff," and the waffle iron was getting its first use since having the "Worked When Tested / Item Sold As Is" sticker slapped on the top. But breakfast was a success! John and I each ate one waffle; the batter made six more, which are cooling in prep for being put away in the freezer.

Thank you, Fluorospherians!

Oh. And is it normal for 1/2 cup of batter to cause the top lid of the waffle iron to levitate?

(I may have overdone the vinegar in the "milk + 1 tbls vinegar to top off = 1 cup buttermilk" substitution.)

Nocle

Actually, yes.

Color me relieved. I thought maybe I'd created a monster and the roof of the kitchen would soon be next.

#112 ::: lscherer398 looks like one of those anodyne generic comment-spams. Does the phrase "Dutch oven" have a <ahem> secondary meaning in USian?