lemon & rhubarb cornmeal pancakes

I just spent a lovely weekend in the Windy City with a dear friend (Who says 'dear friend'? What is this, my memoir from the 1850's?!) from college.  It was so great to catch up  together, but even better that we caught up while cooking up a storm! It's pretty special that that's all it took to make it an enjoyable weekend. We endeavored to make ourselves dessert my first night in town, and it turned out that was a very good call. Later we shared cake with some other pals from college on the beach. It was pretty danged ideal.

We even made dinner -- a vegan feast from a cookbook that has never let my friend down: hominy, tomatillo, and squash stew with ginger-lime tofu "cream" on top and lime-marinated cucumber spears served with tortilla chips. It was so good that I had to take a picture of it!

Apologies for the grainy photo; I only had our tiny old point and shoot with me.

But this post is about pancakes. I know, I know, I've posted pancake recipes before, but you should all know by now that pancake-making is serious biz in this home. This variation was a joint innovation by my husband and me. I think the texture of these pancakes were perfect and that's why I liked them so much. I also liked that it used up the rest of the cooked rhubarb that we had sitting around. I also liked eating them at room temperature on the 7AM bus to Chicago the next day. I think the guy sitting next to me had a hard time hiding the shocked look on his face when I pulled a bag of pancakes out of my purse. Be prepared, dude-man. I suppose he was never a scout.

Lemon & Rhubarb Cornmeal Pancakes

recipe by TofuSurprise

1 c. all-purpose unbleached flour

3 T. corn starch

4 T. cornmeal

1/2 t. baking soda

1/2 t. baking powder

1/2 t. salt

1/2 c. cooked & sweetened rhubarb (leftovers from making rhubarb syrup)

zest of one small lemon

1 egg

3/4 c. milk + 1 T. lemon juice, whisked together (or 3/4 c. buttermilk if you've got it)

2 T. unsalted butter, melted

1 t. vanilla

1/4 c. milk

mascarpone cheese (optional)

fresh strawberries, sliced (optional)

maple syrup (THE REAL DEAL PEOPLE!)

1. Combine all dry ingredients in a medium bowl, mix with zest.

2. Combine all wet ingredients in another bowl.

3. Add ~ 1 cup of wet ingredients to Magic Bullet and blend with the rhubarb. Return to the bowl with the rest of the wet ingredients.

4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

5. Preheat oven to 200 F with a cookie sheet inside of it.

6. Preheat a griddle to medium heat.

7. Add ~1/4 to ~1/3 cup of batter to the griddle (should fit 4 pancakes). Cook until edges look a bit dry and popped bubbles do not refill with batter (no more than 2 minutes).

8. Flip pancakes, cook 45-60 seconds.

9. Place finished pancakes in the oven as they are ready to keep them warm. Now you can serve all of them at the same time! Yay!

10. Assemble pancakes with mascarpone cheese and sliced strawberries and drizzle with maple syrup. Or whatever suits your fancy I suppose. Pancakes!!!

orange cornmeal pancakes

Valuable lesson: Do not attempt to bake, cook, or otherwise make a recipe that has no associated picture. 

Case and point: I found this reasonable-sounding recipe to use a picture-perfect red pepper and purple cabbage. And, of course, cheese. Come on! Cheese makes everything great, right?? Note that the recipe only shows you a delightful still life of the main ingredients.

Truth: There's no picture of said gratin anywhere on the New York Times because in real life, once finished, it totally looks like roadkill:

Because I care, I made this photo small. I do not suggest you click on it to enlarge it.

Sorry, I had to do that. It was a valuable lesson. Food, in most cases, has to look good. Ugh.

Moving on. Pancakes. For Easter Sunday, my husband and I did our usual pancakes, but used Easter as a general landmark for the coming of spring, so we busted out the citrus-zesty pancakes. Check these out, way more delicious in appearance I promise (large picture! Yay!):

YUM.

The recipe can be found here, and the only change I made was to add 1/4 c. corn starch to the batter. This was a good call, trust me.

pancakes: I cannot live without them

Oh, the holidays. This past week took me to the East Coast for some serious family time. It encompassed too many major events -- the holiday itself, a death in the family, a birth in the family, travelling, my folks, my in-laws... too much to take in over a week. Of course, the blogging suffered (I even brought along stuff to post! Really!). I needed every moment with my family I could manage. 

But now we're back home in our cozy-wozy apartment, with our yowly cat and our cuddly doggie (somebody decided it would be fun to roll in poop during doggie daycare while we were away -- just don't breathe in while cudding!). And I went to work, as normal. And finally, I can relax. How do I relax? Aha! Talk about food to you people! Yes! So this trip did involve some cooking (read: therapy), including apple butter crumb cake, soup (duh!), and of course, pancakes. You see, pancakes are an important tradition in our house. My husband and I make them every single weekend. In fact, a friend of mine recently told me that we sound like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, spending our weekend mornings leisurely making pancakes, clipping coupons, and watching Hulu and/or Netflix. The tradition goes back to our Bisquik-based batters in college, and has certainly progressed since then. We used the standard in the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook, other delicious iterations, then settled on an orange-blueberry cornmeal recipe for a good long while, incorporated a few good tricks from Baking Illustrated and have now honed these versions into our own standard. It seemed fitting them we made pancakes for dinner at my sister's house over the holiday -- it is pretty much the way I say "I love you" with food. I could write you a ten-page essay on pancakes, easily.

So I encourage you to make pancakes for dinner, not just for breakfast. Plus you know you are sooo over the pumpkin/cranberry/cinnamon-y recipes that everyone else is posting these days :). It's baking for mealtime!

Our pancakes!

recipe by tofusurprise

Ingredients:

1/2 c. white flour

1/2 c. wheat flour

3 T. cornmeal

1/4 c. oats

1/2 t. salt

1/2 t. baking powder

1/4 t. baking soda

1 T. sugar

2 T. butter, melted

1 large egg

1 tsp. vanilla extract

3/4 c. buttermilk (we use milk soured with lemon juice)

1/4 c. milk (to thin as needed)

1 mushy, ripe banana, quartered then diced

1/2 c. chocolate chips

1. Heat oven to 200 F (lowest setting) with a cookie sheet inside. This is to keep all the pancakes warm so you can all eat them at once.

2. Combine flours, sugar, cornmeal, oats, salt, powder, and soda in a medium mixing bowl.

3. In a 2-cup measuring cup, mix up buttermilk. While it sits, melt the butter and turn on the griddle over medium heat. 

4. Add the egg and vanilla to the milk and mix. Add the butter and mix well.

5. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. With a rubber scraper, mix the batter about halfway (looks chunky, visible flour-y blobs) and then add the banana and chocolate chips.

6. Mix until just combined. If it looks too thick, thin with up to 1/4 c. milk. It should be thick enough to suspend the chocolate chips.

7. Time to calibrate the griddle! Take a tablespoon of batter and place it in the middle of the griddle (tee hee!). Wait one minute. Flip the mini-pancake and evaluate the golden-ness of the pancake. Cook opposite side ~45 seconds, and then either eat it (gotta make sure it tastes okay, right?) or stick it in the oven on the cookie sheet.

8. Once the griddle temperature is right, use a 1/4 c. measuring cup and pour out four pancakes onto the griddle. They should cook for ~1:45 to 2:30, until the bubbles on the edges of the pancakes pop and don't fill back in.

9. Flip the pancakes, cook the other sides for ~1:30, and put them in the oven. 

10. Give a quick stir to the batter and make sure it is homogeneous -- it tends to stratify, and you want to make sure each batch is just as good!

11. Repeat until done! Time for pancakes! Don't forget to turn off the griddle and the oven!

12. Serving suggestions: My husband says they are so good he prefers them plain (weird, I know). I like some protein in the morning, so I usually put plain greek yogurt on top if I have it, then maple syrup. Otherwise, I like standard yogurt, peanut butter, or mascarpone on top, usually with roasted cashews and/or almonds as well.

Enjoy!