the hungry moosaurus

I’ve been hearing about these pancakes from my parents since I was born (or as far back as I can remember, I guess) — soft, light, delicate sour cream pancakes that they discovered at some now defunct cafe in Berkeley. My mom had cut a recipe out of the newspaper at some point, but they were never able to get it quite right.

With a tub of left over sour cream and a hankering for pancakes, I remembered my parents’ pancakes and did a quick Google search, which turned up an article and a recipe.

I made the batter the night before (something I know my parents never did), used expired cake flour (they’ve been using all purpose, they have no idea what cake flour is) and whipped up a batch, one tablespoonful of batter at a time on my cast iron skillet.  I never had the original pancakes (I wasn’t born yet) but I have to think I got pretty close.  The pancakes were bite sized (that’s a full size dinner plate in the pictures) clouds of creamy, eggy batter barely held together and quick to dissolve in my mouth.

The two people I fed both said they were the best pancakes ever — “These things are good. And I don’t like pancakes! Can I have more? I’m going to eat until I’m uncomfortably full!”

Notes for next time: I made .75 batches of batter, which fed three people comfortably. Also, cooking them on a cast iron skillet produces the pale, slightly mottled pancakes in the pictures above. A non stick skillet seems to produce a more even, darker brown. Lastly, a very light layer of vegetable shortening seemed to work best.

Hello world!

Instead of trying to find a nice layout and modify it to my liking, I spent this evening attempting to make thin mints, cilantro pesto sauce & clam pasta.  The latter two turned out quite well (who knew mayo had any place in cilantro sauces? I certainly didn’t.) but the first… well, turned out warty and painful.

With about seven cookies to dip, I decided to nuke the chocolate a bit more to soften it, over did it, dipped a cookie, fished it out with my finger… And now have a blister on the tip of my index finger.  Burninated by home made thin mints.

Despite the warts (notice the lumpy uneven surface) and the thickness (thickmints?) I’m told they tasted good, but could do with a little more peppermint extract.

Recipe from Baking Bites.