Pumpkin Pancakes 12/16/10 - 12/17/10

Having heard that a fellow blogger is going through many days of pancakes, I'm not an expert, but I did make pumpkin pancakes from this recipe here. My discovery about pumpkin-flavored food is that you can take any food, add pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spices, and you have something new. Examples include a pumpkin pie cake Holly and I made for Tom last year, a pumpkin drink at Jamba Juice that was basically liquified pumpkin pie, and this pancake recipe here.

The batter came out very wet, as expected, but it was also fairly thick. A few critical errors were made in the process of making the pancakes. First, I was trying to cook them on medium-high like regular pancakes, but it turns out that the pumpkin means that it doesn't cook through quite the same. The first batch of them came out a little burned and undercooked because of that. The lesson there is to follow the recipe, even if it goes against your intuition. Another batch was thrown by the large amount of oil that ended up in the pan because of the large spout on the oil pourer we have here at home.

The recipe made far too many pancakes for just me and my sister, and I got another shot at it the next day with more of the batter. Medium heat worked better, but it was slow, and still didn't have the consistency I was hoping for. I'm uncertain what could be different about it, whether the batter should've been spread more in the pan or the batter was just too wet, but it could use some tweaking. Regardless, the pumpkin and maple syrup worked pretty well together and made for 2 tasty brunches.

PS Steak 'n Shake is inferior to In-N-Out. It looks good but isn't quite as good.