My apologies, sometimes it takes me a while to write...
Taken from my Journal where incidentally has been where I've been taking my cooking notes. I edited the format a bit so that it could fit the blog format as well as included writing it as a story so that it translates better.
Sunday January 9th, 2011 at Scarlett's 0952 unmedicated (on Dextroamphetamine for A.D.D.)
Been up for a few hours now & think I want to make breakfast.
Yogurt Pancakes
Recipe adapted from 1generation.elementsintime.com/?p=377
.5 Cup All Purpose Flour
1.5 Tbs Sugar
1 tsp Salt
.5 tsp Baking Soda
.5 tsp Baking Powder
2 Large Eggs
1 Cup Yogurt
1 tsp Vanilla
1 Cup Fresh or Frozen Fruit
Whisk dry ingredients and make a well for wet ingredients.
Mix dry and wet ingredients till just mixed, leave lumpy.
Let sit at least 5 mins.
Add Fruit (fold in).
Let sit again.
Last Sunday I had this wild idea of making Chocolate Cherry Honey Yogurt Pancakes from scratch.
Two weekends ago I had made Blueberry Maple Pancakes and Hotlink and Cheese Scrambled Eggs for a Sunday Breakfast. I did not write about it because I forgot the details and I made the meal before I created the blog. I did discover how I could make Pancakes that come out similar to Mc Donalds Mc Griddle Buns. Add B Grade Maple Syrup to the batter. I couldn't tell you the ratios but I did use a little less water then the back of the Blueberry Pancake Mix box called for, to compensate for using the syrup. Or maybe I used no water at all... On second thought I guess I don't know how to make Blueberry McGriddle Buns....
The Fetuchini I blogged about was the meal that finalized my decision to create a cooking blog.
Mostly what inspired me to make the pancakes was having a lot of individual cups of flavored yogurts.
I started at 1003 medicated.
Instead of 1 Cup of plain or vanilla yogurt I used .5 Cup of Wallaby Organic Dark Chocolate (fruit on the bottom type of yogurt, but obviously chocolate is not fruit... Maybe it's processed bean?...) and .5 Cup of Voskos Greek Non Fat Honey Blend.
I also used only 1tsp of Sugar because of the Honey in the Yogurt and .5tsp and 1 drop of Vanilla Extract. I reduced the Vanilla because I thought it would be too many distracting flavors. Chocolate, Honey, Cherries. I added 3 individual Dove snack sized or grab bag sized Milk Chocolate thingies.
By 1030 I cut myself with with a butter knife... That's what I get for using a butter knife for cutting up chocolate that was already in tiny size. Thus me learning that yes, Kurt and everyone else is right about good knives making a difference. I should have trusted myself to use the good stuff and not be lazy about making use of a chopping board.
Chopped the Cherries in half. Fresh Cherries. They bleed. I thought it was appropriate.
Smoked at 1047 frustrated. I knew that this experiment would not be in my favor. Smoking saved me from trashing everything I did.
1100 back to work. Ingredients mixed as suggested, minus the chocolate and cherries. Smoking allowed for the batter to double the size.
In with the cherries.
The batter deflated.
I played some games on my ipod for a while.
The batter never returned to how it was before I put the cherries in.
I used a Emeril Lagasse Non Stick Frying Pan for the Pancakes. The extra weight in the higher end pans does make a difference. If it wasn't for Scarlett teaching me the properties of the pan, I would have burned everything it ever touched. The heavier pans retain and keep heat better. The problem with that is that it takes a long time for them to cool. For the impatient, it would seem that one needs to turn up the heat. I've learned that often times it's time not heat that's needed. I also learned that because the pan keeps the heat more constant, I can control cooking better. Why? Well I don't have to beat the fire and deal with inconsistent temperatures, which I realize now was a huge problem with cooking before. I could time things a little better.
At the same time of cooking the Pancakes I made a Hot Link Spinich and Cheese Scramble. Scarlett doesn't understand how I could have 2 pans going at the same time, but I can't stand staring at one pan waiting. Most of my food turns out to not be edible when I do that. I'm to impatient. A lot about cooking has to do with timing. I want everything at the proper temperature and I also want things to be cooked right. Doing multiple things at the same time while keeps me from ruining a dish because of impatience.
I won't go into much detail about the Scramble because I'm tired and lazy and made the scramble once previous, minus the spinach. Cooking the 2 Hot Links, cut into .5cm thick slices in butter. I forgot that the butter was not necessary. The Hot Links contain enough fat and it oozes out while cooking. I had to drain some oil and it seemed that the butter made the scramble gross over all. So I scrambled/beat some eggs and .5tsp of water, season with salt and pepper. Drained oil in the pan. If I didn't I would have been making Oil and Hot Links Scramble with some egg. So in the scrambled egg (used a fork). Put spinach from the salad bag in the picture (we used some of the salad for Kurt's Salad Recipe) in the eggs, about 20 leaves of I believe baby Spinach. Dumped the eggs in to the pan with the nearly burned hot links. Turned the heat to a 2 (Fetuchini Blog talks about my scale) slowly Folding the eggs around the pan till they were cooked. I added some sort of already shreaded cheese on top of the eggs once the eggs were no longer liquidy and covered with a pan cover.
With the Pancakes I made the mistake of using butter in the pan. Burned butter. I never knew that butter could evaporate or something. It did for me that day, but it left it's poop trail ruining the pancakes. After I added the butter I remember Scarlett telling me not to butter the pan for pancakes, at least not for a beginner with that sort of pan. That's what the non stick is for. After 2 pancakes I wiped the butter off but there was no saving things. Burnt outside, soggy seeming inside. I kept telling myself that chocolate is brown, so it will look burned but to not be alarmed go by feel. The pancakes just wouldn't turn well. Even cooking just one pancake at a time didn't seem to help.
My method was this. Put .25 Cup of batter at a time in pan, add a few chunks of chocolate in pancake to be, wait till bubbles form through out pancake, flip... Or scramble them around, which I kinda did for the first and second one because flipping seemed impossible. Wait 30secs to 1 min, feel to make sure they are not doughy. Then flip or leave it. The bubbles and form was not telling me anything about doneness so I alternated, pretending that I could hear the pancake tell me what needed to be done.
To me, all the pancakes tasted slightly burned. They weren't bad, just off a bit. Slightly acrid or something. They tasted burnt, salty, or baking soda tasting, I don't know. I added more sugar half way through cooking them, but it didn't help.
Scarlett told me that the taste might be because of the Chocolate. Chocolate burns very easily. She reassured me that it was not my fault. I did not know that the pancakes would not be done before the chocolate burned. Scarlett mainly believed that the main issue was that the chocolate from the pancake before would have melted onto the pan, which would burn onto the next pancake. She was able to distinguish the first pancakes from the lasts just based on the way they tasted. I think that I just burned the chocolate on every pancake. When I thought of it, I never saw chocolate pancakes with chocolate batter. Chocolate chips within, sometimes, but not chocolate batter. Now I know why.
Oh well. I ate one pancake. Scarlett ate the rest so I guess they weren't too bad.
The fresh fruit was also an issue for me. Maybe halves or thirds on some of the cherries really needed to be quarters sliced. I'm not sure if I was supposed to account for the liquid in the fruit or what. I forget what Scarlett said about the batter exactly, but she said that it seemed the batter didn't rise.
All in all I could have done worst. They were edible.
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