Week 52 - Fruit Taco Pancakes

Well, here I am at week 52.  A little behind schedule, but still, I made it.  Like the little engine that could.  It's funny how now I just enjoy reading recipes and imagining what it would be like and how I could tweak it to make it better.  

So what's in store for me now that I have completed my quest of 52 pancakes?  Well, for now, I will be taking a break from pancakes, and any kind of breakfast food for that matter.  For at least a few weeks, maybe months, I do not want to wake up on the weekends and measure, mix, and cook.  

There are a few french toast recipes I've been storing away to try out after this, but I think if try to do 52 weeks of French Toast my husband will hate me.  As will my waist line. 
Jó étvágyat!

Fruit Taco Pancakes

Ingredients

• 2 eggs, separated
• 2 cups buttermilk
• 4 tablespoons melted butter
• 2 cups "Simply Perfect" Pancake Mix (See week 5)
• Zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• butter, for greasing the pan
• Assorted fresh fruit of your choice
• Whipped cream (optional)

Directions

1. Heat an electric griddle or frying pan to 350 degrees F.

2. Whisk the egg whites until white and frothy.  
3. In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks, buttermilk, melted butter, and pancake mix together.  
4. Add in the egg whites and then mix in the lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla.
5. Lightly butter the griddle.
6. Gently ladle the pancake batter onto the griddle.  When bubbles begin to set around the edges of the pancake and the griddle-side of the cake is golden, gently flip the pancakes. Continue to cook 2 to 3 minutes or until the pancake is set.

7. Top each pancake with fresh fruit, whipped cream, fold, and eat like a taco!

Week 51 - Blueberry Sour Cream Pancakes

I'm starting to come to the end of this fun, sometimes stressful, but (almost) always tasty journey.  There were a few major fails along the way which I chose not to post.  So I guess I have made more than 52 recipes already, but the 51, soon to be 52 recipes are ones I can be proud of and comfortably serve to guests. 

This was another Pinterest find from Remodelaholic which strayed from my usual pancake batter base.  I like using whole wheat flour and found that you really can't notice the difference in taste.  But hopefully my body picks up on the healthy factor!

There is a lot of liquid in this recipe, but found it still lead to a very light and fluffy pancake.  My daughter devoured two of this, which is quite a lot of her little tummy.  So I'd say this is another winner.  Jó étvágyat!

Blueberry Sour Cream Pancakes
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 cups milk
1/2 cup light sour cream
1/2 cup greek yogurt
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1-2 cups frozen or fresh blueberries

Directions:
1. Combine all the dry ingredients together i a bowl.  In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs.  Then add milk, sour cream, yogurt, butter, and vanilla.
2. Pour wet ingredients into dry and mix until combined, but don't work out the lumps!  Fold in blueberries.
3. Ladle batter onto a preheated griddle over medium-high heat, coated with butter.  Cook until bubbles form around the edges and golden brown (approx. 3-4 minutes).  Then flip and continue to cook until that side is also golder brown (approx. 3-4 minutes).

4. Serve with maple syrup. 

Week 50 - Korean Scallion Pancakes with Spicy Dipping Sauce

Here's another tasty savory pancake.  I made these to go along with a stir fry dinner and served with a spicy soy dipping sauce.  Rather than using the griddle, I used my skillet to make large pancakes.  We just tore in to these and dipped in the sauce.  Jó étvágyat!

Korean Scallion Pancakes
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups water
1 bunch scallions, thinly sliced
1 tsp salt
Oil for cooking in the pan

Directions:
1. Mix all ingredients and let sit for at least 10 minutes.  This will be a thinner batter than regular pancakes.

2. Heat pan over medium heat and coat thinly with oil.
3. Pour batter in to skillet.  Should be about 1/4 of the batter.

4. Cook for 3-4 minutes and flip and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes or until golden brown.

Spicy dipping sauce
Ingredients:
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
1 Tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp hot sauce, I used Sriracha sauce
Dash of garlic powder

Directions:
1.Mix all ingredients together.

Week 49 - Hungarian style Crepes (Palascinta)

I've been holding on to this recipe for a while.  Growing up I loved eating these Hungarian Style Crepes.  And not just for breakfast, but as a snack, dessert, or lunch or dinner.  Once you get the basic crepe down you can fill it with virtually anything.

The fillings I grew up with primarily consisted of chocolate, apricot jelly, and a delicious cottage cheese filling.

The chocolate is so simple, all you do is give the crepe a good hefty sprinkle NesQuik.  The heat and moisture from the crepe melts it into this fantastic chocolatey syrup.  Then there's the apricot jelly, a staple of so many Hungarian dishes and desserts.  On this particular day I was running low on apricot jelly (and my husband isn't a huge fan), so I used Cherry Jam instead and it worked out just as well.  Again, very simple to do, you do nothing more than spread the jelly or jam on to the crepe and roll it up.  My favorite filling though, the cottage cheese requires a tiny bit more work.  I included the recipe at the bottom and as you will see, it's ridiculously simple!

Now there are several ways to fold a crepe I guess, but I always had them rolled up like cigars.  I think this method is very conducive to picking it up and eating by hand rather than bothering with any pesky forks or knives.  Some fancy places will fold the crepe in half, and then half again, making a quarter.  I guess there's nothing wrong with doing it this way.  But I like to stick with tradition, at least, the tradition I grew up with.

So here are a few of my tips for making perfect crepes.
1. Get everything set up before you start cooking.  These are very thin pancakes and thus cook very quickly!
2. Be prepared that there were will be a few "practice" crepes, meaning they will tear, burn, etc.  For some reason the first one always turns out bad, so no need to worry, just keep swirling and flipping and you will eventually get the hang of it.

First crepe = fail, not a perfect circle...

but it sure does taste good!

3. Get creative with fillings!  Below are a few of my favorites.
Jó étvágyat!

Palascinta
Ingredients:
3 cups milk
3 eggs
2 Tbsp Canola Oil
Pinch of salt
2 3/4 cups flour
1/2 cup club soda
Filling of your choice

Directions:
1. Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend on high until smooth.
2. Heat a skillet over medium heat, coat ever so lightly with canola oil.

Just a tiny bit of oil

3. Add a ladle of the batter to the pan and immediately begin swirling the batter around the pan until it coats the entire bottom of the pan.

4. Allow to cook over medium heat for 30-60 seconds.  You can use a thin spatula to peek underneath to see how cooked the crepe is.  It should have a slight golden brown color to it.  When it does, flip to cook the other side for another 30-60 seconds.  (Note these times are an estimate and my best guess.  Like I said before, these cook quickly and therefor I didn't have time to actually time myself.  Go based on doneness versus time.  Plus each stove top is slightly different.)

5. Once it is cooked, removed from the pan, lay flat on a plate and spread whatever filling you desire on to the crepe and then roll!

Chocolate crepes.  Just a tip, do not spread the filling all the way to the end.  It makes it easier to complete the roll.

Cherry Jam

Cottage Cheese Filling
Ingredients:
10 Tbsp cottage cheese
6 Tbsp sour cream
Handful of raisins
2 Tbsp sugar
Zest of 1/2 a lemon

Directions:
1.Combine all ingredients in a bowl.
2. Done! (Told you it was easy)

Roll baby, roll

Week 48 - Chili Lime Corn-Cakes with Avocado Cream

I guess you could say I've taken a little vacation away from making pancakes.  Partly because my husband has been pleading with me, "please, no more pancakes for a while."  Part of it too has been that I needed a bit of a break and now I'm back with fresh ideas.

I came across a pancake idea through Pinterest for Savory Lime Corncakes .  I thought this would be a perfect side to the Chicken Tortilla Soup I had going in the crockpot. 

So I took the idea for the recipe and ran with it, using my base for pancakes but making tweaks along the way.  First I substituted half of the flour for cornmeal, but realized the batter was too loose and added more corn meal.  Much better!  Then I added fun spices like garlic powder, chili powder, and paprika (gotta get the Hungarian influence in there too :-) .  For the liquid portion of the recipe I added in a bit of lime juice to brighten things up. 

I absolutely love the idea of the avocado cream.  I would have never thought to mix guacamole with sour cream, but now makes perfect sense!  I think I'll be using this cream sauce in lots of other things too.  Jó étvágyat!

Chili Lime Corn-Cakes with Avocado Cream
Ingredients:
1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp paprika
1 egg
1 cup milk
1 Tbsp lime juice
2 Tbsp butter, melted
Avocado cream (recipe to follow)

Directions:
1. Preheat a griddle or pan to medium-high heat
2. Combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt, garlic powder, chili powder, and paprika in the bowl.
3. In a separate bowl whisk the egg white until light ad frothy.  Whisk in the egg yolk, milk, melted butter, and lime juice.
4. Whisk together the dry ingredients with the wet until fairly smooth.
5. Butter the griddle or pan.  Ladle corn cake mixture on to the pan, cook for 3-4 minutes or until bubbles form around the edges, then flip and cook an addition 3-4 minutes.

6. Serve warm with avocado cream.


Avocado Cream
Ingredients:
4 oz premade guacamole (I used Wholly Guacamole)

Week 47 - Fluffy Apple Pancake

It's that time of year again, when we go apple picking and have an abundance of apples.  This will be one of many apple recipes I will be making this week.  I found the recipe through Pinterest, one of my new addictions, and is from Love and Lemons.

This recipe resembles the Dutch Baby Pancakes I made earlier in the year, but this doesn't puff up as much, but still delicious. Jó étvágyat!

Fluffy Apple Pancakes
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons butter
3 apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. Combine brown sugar and cinnamon.
3. Whisk together eggs and milk.
4. Mix together flour and baking powder and stir it into the egg/milk mixture.
5. In a cast iron skillet, heat butter, add the apple slices and 1 tablespoon of the brown sugar mixture and cook, stirring, until soft. About 5 minutes.

6. Pour the batter over the apples and sprinkle the remaining brown sugar on top.  Bake until it puffs up, about 18-20 minutes.

Ready for the oven

The finished product

Week 46 - Honey Glazed Buttermilk Ebelskivers

This week's recipe didn't exactly go as planned.  Simple enough recipe, or so I thought.  It came from my Ebelskiver Cook Book.  It's a simple pancake batter with a honey glaze.  You start by melting butter in the wells of an Ebelskiver pan, then add a bit of honey to each well, then batter.
So here's what happened so you don't make the same mistakes I did.  The first batch I made burned because the heat was too high.  It was set to medium high heat.  The second batch was perfect and delicious.  I ran the pan under cold water to cool down the pan after the first (disaster) batch and lowered the heat of medium low.  The third batch I made was also on medium low heat but burned again. 

Note to self, burnt honey does NOT taste good!

Either the pan got too warm, or there was leftover honey from the previous batch that ended up burning.  Whichever it was, I would suggest cooling the pan and wiping it clean in between batches.  Jó étvágyat!

Honey Glazed Buttermilk Ebelskivers
Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
pinch of salt
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup honey

Directions:
1. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt.
2. In a small bowl, mix together the egg yolks, buttermilk and 2 Tbsp of the melted butter. 
3. Combine the egg yolk mixture with the flour mixture until combined.  It will be slightly lumpy.
4. In another bowl, whisk the egg whites until nice and frothy, then fold in to the batter until combined.
5. Brush the wells of the Ebelskiver pan with the remaining melted butter and place the pan over medium low heat. 

6. Pour 1 tsp of honey into each well.  When the honey starts to bubble, add about 2 Tbsp of the batter to each well.

Honey bear

Bubbling honey

7. Cook until the bottoms of the pancakes are lightly browned and crisp (about 4-6 minutes).  Then, using wooden sticks, I use chopsticks, turn the pancakes and continue to cook for a few more minutes.  Keep checking to make sure they don't burn!