I’m back if only temporarily. I’m working out one of life’s “little” challenges and have been eating restaurant food more than food from my own kitchen.  So… not a lot to blog about.  I really miss doing this and hope that anyone still hanging on out there, having patience with me, will keep being patient and wait for my life to become something vaguely resembling it’s former self. 

I have to admit something to you.  I have been holding back a pancake recipe.  It’s actually something I put together years ago and it is the recipe I go to often.  These are two-grain pancakes but the second grain is surprising. I created a whole-wheat pancake but switched out some of the flour for brown rice flour.  Brown rice flour has no gluten so using it in these pancakes gives the finished product a lighter texture and a nuttier flavor.  These pancakes can be made with buttermilk, which makes them thin, and almost crepe like.  The best way to make them however is to mix one part plain nonfat yogurt with one part milk for the liquid in the recipe and let the batter stand a few minutes before cooking the pancakes.  You will be rewarded with a thick, tall pancake with amazing flavor and texture.  Perfect for stacking.  Perfect for loading up with goodies. 

Today’s breakfast featured bananas cooked inside the pancakes until they caramelized.  We had the sweetest fresh strawberries so we generously loaded them on top of the pancakes with yogurt, maple syrup and wheat germ.  As the summer progresses, use any fruit that tickles your fancy either on or in the pancakes.  All berries except strawberries can be cooked into the cakes.  Stone fruit such as peaches and nectarines are also excellent cooked in the pancakes.  Toast pecans, walnuts or almonds to sprinkle on top.  You deserve it.

Mimi’s wheat and rice cakes

½ cup brown rice flour

1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour

½ tsp baking powder

¾ tsp baking soda

1 egg

1 cup nonfat yogurt mixed with 1 cup low fat milk until smooth, or 2 cups buttermilk

2 tbsp olive oil or canola oil

Butter for frying

Thinly sliced fruit or whole berries (optional)

In a large bowl mix together the brown rice flour, whole-wheat flour, baking powder and baking soda.  In another bowl, beat the egg.  Add the egg, milk/yogurt mixture or buttermilk and oil to the dry ingredients.  Mix well to make sure the wet and dry ingredients are incorporated but don’t over mix.  Let the batter stand at least ten minutes before you fry the pancakes.

Preheat an electric griddle to 325 degrees.  Melt butter on the griddle (for crispy edged pancakes).  Ladle the pancakes onto the griddle. If you want to add fruit, do it as soon as you ladle the pancakes onto the griddle.  Just sprinkle the fruit onto the surface of the cakes and lightly press it in.  Cook the pancakes until they look bubbly and dry on the edges.  This should take three or four minutes.  Turn the pancakes and cook them another two or three minutes.

The pancakes may have to be cooked in two batches.  If you are not serving the first batch right away, store them on a cookie sheet in a warm oven (200 degrees f.) or store them in a covered glass dish.

Enjoy!

I have no idea what is wrong with me this week.  I have been allowing myself a maximum of five to six hours of sleep per night the entire week. All week I have had trouble waking up.  I have been tired, and grumpy.  My normal brainpower has been very impaired and I’ve felt horrible all week.  This morning, with no responsibilities and no expectations, I slept and slept a luxurious sleep that allowed me to wake naturally at a quarter to ten this morning.  Mmmmm.  It felt so good.  My boyfriend was very patient and did not try to wake me up.  But after I dilly dallied browsing a Gourmet magazine and the internet, the pleasant sound of my boyfriend’s guitar gave way to a low rumbling chanting of “pancakes, pancakes, pancakes, pancakes…”   It must be time for the poor guy to be fed.  Time to set to work.

I was reading the February issue of Gourmet this morning when I noticed that I put a crimp on a certain page weeks ago when I got it.  The page had four different kinds of breakfast yummies on it.  By some chance of fate, I had sour cream in the house (my boyfriend dislikes sour cream so we don’t use it as a topping for anything, it is usually a rare ingredient in my actual cooking).  The recipe that caught my eye was for Cardamom sour-cream waffles with lingonberry preserves.  I had all of the ingredients except lingonberry preserves.  I do however; have a really exceptional jar of raspberry and cranberry preserves, which I thought should be tart sweet enough to stand in for the berries in the recipe.  I consulted with my boyfriend and he felt adventurous enough to give them a try.

The recipe was a hit.  The only problem I had was my normal problem that I can’t seem to make a crispy waffle to save my life.  I’m not sure if it is me, the phase of the moon or my waffle maker but my waffles always come out soft.  I suspect it is the olive oil that I fill my mister with.  I should probably oil the waffle maker with polyunsaturated oil.  But the waffles were sooooo good anyway!

Boyfriend:  These are so good.  You won’t forget to write this recipe down, will you?

As I shake my head and chew, I’m thinking: I hope I’ll remember to make these again.

Boyfriend:  Aren’t you going to blog these?  Will you remember to make these?

Chewing, I get up and find the camera.  As I keep thinking, I don’t want to get up, I don’t want to let these get cold, I already blogged a couple of days ago, grrrrr….

Click

Click

Click….

Cardamom Sour-Cream Waffles

Adapted from the February issue of Gourmet Magazine

1 ½ cups whole-wheat pastry flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

¾ tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground cardamom

¼ tsp salt

1 cup lowfat milk

1 cup sour cream

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 tbsp dark honey

2 large eggs

3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

Serve the waffles with yogurt, maple syrup and preserves (lingonberry if you can find them, if not any tart berry preserves such as raspberry cranberry preserves will do nicely.  You want a good berry flavor to compliment the floral flavor of the cardamom)

Preheat your waffle iron.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cardamom, and salt.  In another bowl, whisk together milk, sour cream, vanilla, honey, eggs and melted butter.  Mix wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just well combined.  Spray or brush the waffle iron with oil.  Cook waffles according to your waffle iron’s instructions.  Store waffles in a slightly warm oven until all of the waffles are cooked and you are ready to serve them.

Over the past few weeks, this has been anything but a food blog and my diet has been anything but healthy.  During the weeks I was away, my Mom and I ate a lot of restaurant/fast food and hospital food.  The stress made us too tired to take care of ourselves properly and there was really no time to take care of the day-to-day chores like grocery shopping and cooking.  My Dad is back at home now and getting stronger every day.  I called him a couple of days ago and asked him how he was.  He boisterously replied “TERRIFIC!!!”  Which is his standard answer to that standard question.  I instantly knew things were now normal.  Things will be o.k.

I have been cooking a few things since I have gotten back but we have gotten into a bad restaurant habit again.  Work has been stressful since I have been back so I have been easing my personal life slowly back to that place called normal. 

Today was the first day I really felt home.  It was the first day that I really got excited about getting back into the kitchen.  I woke up and wanted to make pancakes.  If you have been browsing around this blog, you know that Saturday mornings mean breakfast at my home.  Saturdays are all about sleeping in late and then settling into a yummy plate of something sweet or savory and very filling, a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice and a mug of something hot, bitter and steamy.

I wanted pancakes and after brushing off the remnants of a strange dream where I was traveling somewhere on a Greyhound bus and my Mother was loading an unending supply of plastic bags of groceries onto the bus for me, my mind was ready to use the energy from that dream state and come up with something beautiful in the real world.  For some reason, I began to think of carrot cake and how wonderful pancakes would be if they were carrot cake instead.  I found a small bunch of thin, sweet carrots in the vegetable drawer of our fridge.  They were too small to peel, so I scrubbed them well and shredded them.  Using a favorite recipe for sweet potato pancakes as a general roadmap, I came up with some fragrant dried fruit and vegetable pancakes that take getting your first serving of vegetables for the day to another plain of experience altogether.

Carrot Cake Pancakes

2 cups of shredded carrots

2 tsp. finely grated orange peel

2 large eggs, scrambled

2 cups milk

1 cup currants

4 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp dark honey

2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp ginger powder

½ tsp allspice

Butter for frying

Maple-cinnamon yogurt (recipe follows)

Toasted Walnuts

In a large bowl, combine shredded carrots, orange peel, eggs, milk, currants, olive oil and honey.  In another bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice.  Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients.  Let the batter stand for at least ten minutes.  (This will result in a fluffier pancake with softer currants).  If using an electric griddle, preheat the griddle to 350 degrees F.  Melt butter onto griddle surface.  Ladle batter onto griddle.  Cook pancakes until bubbles form and the edges begin to dry out about 3-4 minutes.  Turn pancakes.  Cook second side until lightly browned, about 1-2 minutes more. 

This recipe makes a lot of pancakes, even with a large electric griddle you will need to make two batches.  Keep the first batch warm in a covered dish or a preheated 200 degree F. oven  Serve these with Maple Cinnamon Yogurt, Maple Syrup and toasted walnuts to get the full effect of carrot cake for breakfast.

Maple-cinnamon yogurt

1 cup of plain nonfat yogurt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp maple syrup

 Combine yogurt, cinnamon and maple syrup with a whisk until smooth.

After months of unusually hot weather, we are finally beginning to get the kind of winter chill that makes me think of Christmastime even though the sky is still clear and blue and the air is dry.  That’s California for you.  No change of season when you think about it.  It’s either dry and hot or dry and cold.

Our local farmer’s market also reflects the season.  We have persimmons, oranges and apples and that’s about it.  Some enterprising farmers dried their summer and fall bounty so plenty of dried fruit is also available.  With that in mind, I wanted fruit on my pancakes but the kitchen was looking pretty sparse.  We have plenty of Fuji apples in the fridge so playing off of a recipe for maple roasted yams that I love, I decided to maple roast some Fuji’s to top our pancakes with.  This was an impromptu effort on my part so the following recipe is just an approximation.  I don’t think it would be easy to mess these up even with my “pinch of this, pinch of that” instructions.  These apples were fabulous on our favorite cornmeal pancakes with yogurt and toasted walnuts.  I think they would also make an excellent side dish for pork chops as well.

Maple roasted apples

4-5 Fuji apples, peeled, cored and sliced

Lemon zest from ½ a lemon, approx. 1 tsp

1-2 tsp lemon juice

A generous amount of cinnamon

A miserly amount of nutmeg

Ginger to taste

A generous handful of raisons

2-3 tbsp grade B maple syrup

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. 

Toss the apple slices with lemon juice and zest.  Combine apple mixture with raisons and cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and maple syrup to coat.  Roast the apples in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes or until the raisons are plump and the apples are caramelized and soft and lightly browned.

Sorry.  I know the picture I took is terrible.  It was dark when we sat down to breakfast this morning and I knew I wanted to write about something that is enjoying a renaissance in our kitchen.  It is something that I have never cooked myself.  This is something my boyfriend used to cook all of the time for his own breakfast but it is something he stopped eating years ago.  All of a sudden this tasty breakfast item is back and even though I never get to have it, I was treated to it today.  Sunday morning is grocery-shopping day or I should say grocery-shopping hell.  Although we love eating home cooked meals, we don’t like to shop.  I don’t like to go by myself and my boyfriend sees it as something that wastes perfectly good weekend relaxing time.  Both of us are committed to shopping at our farmer’s market because the produce is mega fresh and reasonably priced and we love the idea of eating local and supporting the farmers.  But…the farmers market adds time to the whole shopping experience, which includes two stores.  Why two stores?  Well, the best meat, cheese and dairy products come from our local high end grocery store but we are cheap bastards who would rather pay much less for staple items so we hit Trader Joes too.  Thus, shopping hell.  Things are crowded, and our tempers begin to flare in anticipation of the whole ordeal.  So the picture is lousy because we decided to add making French toast and this yummy scramble to the already stressful, time strapped morning.  I don’t feel bad about the picture.  This tasty breakfast entrée is impossible to photograph anyway.  It looks soupy, it has strange angles, which catch the light in odd ways. It is completely unnatural looking.  There was really nothing I could do about the photo.

So… ew…what is it?  My friends, you are looking at tofu scramble (with a side of non-vegan sprouted grain French toast).  Now before you decide to go find another blog to look at, hear me out.  This stuff is really, really good.  The whole story starts in the early 90’s with a natural foods market on the east side of Santa Barbara.  The store called Follow your heart started out as a tiny whole foods store up the block from where it ended up.  It had a really great deli in the old days.  In the early 90s a shopping center was built up the street from them and a space was made for a full size grocery.  They moved into the space and opened a restaurant to go with the excellent deli.  The restaurant was open for breakfast and we went there often because they had the most amazing vegetarian breakfast items I have ever seen in my life.  I was so, so sad when they finally closed their doors a few years later.  One thing they did well was tofu scramble.  It had spices and a wonderful yellow color.  They served it as a scramble, in benedicts and burritos.  I managed to stumble onto a recipe that produced a very similar product in the kind of magazine they give you for free at the health food store and my boyfriend who loved tofu scramble began making it at home.  During the week, I am a bowl of cereal kinda gal.  My boyfriend has to have more than cereal, so tofu scramble became his recipe, which is always made during the week.  So today was a treat for me.  He cooked it for me!  I was happy to have it.

As I said, my boyfriend suddenly began making tofu scramble again.  Out of the two of us, he is the one who consistently keeps a healthy outlook.  He gets regular exercise and eats very healthfully.  I asked him why he became interested in making tofu scramble again.  He told me it is because it contains brewer’s yeast, which is difficult to add to your diet in other ways.  Brewer’s yeast is loaded with B vitamins and he wanted a dietary way to ensure he was getting enough B vitamins. 

Aside from how healthy it is, tofu scramble is also delicious.  This recipe has plenty of onion powder and garlic powder and miso paste.  It is creamy and flavorful and it is filling.  The other day we had leftovers.  I sampled a little bit of the leftovers cold.  Although I haven’t tried it yet, I think cold leftover tofu scramble would be wonderful as a substitute for another egg favorite.  It would make an incredible egg-less egg salad sandwich.

Tofu Scramble

One 14-16 oz container of firm or extra firm tofu, drained

4 tbsp nutritional yeast

4 tbsp water

2 tbsp light miso

½ tsp turmeric

½ tsp onion powder

Garlic powder to taste (optional)

Pepper to taste (optional)

Olive oil for sautéing

Coarsely crumble the tofu into a bowl.  Sprinkle yeast over tofu and stir to coat.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients except for the optional pepper.  Set aside.  Heat a lightly greased skillet over medium high heat.  Pour in the tofu mixture and then pour in the miso mixture.  Sauté and carefully turn the mixture with a flat wooden spatula or spoon.  You don’t want to break up the tofu too much.  The mixture should turn a nice uniform yellow color.  Cook until completely heated through.  Season with pepper if using and serve immediately.

For a few years, I had the pleasure of accompanying my best friend and her husband to a Canadian lodge each fall for their anniversary.  It was the perfect vacation.  A kind of a summer camp for grown ups.  You get to sleep in a cabin.  You can participate in different activities such as kayaking or tennis or bike riding.  You can be incredibly lazy and read and nap all day long if that’s what you are into.  This place feeds you well several times per day.  The reason I bring this up is that breakfast could be a choice of light fare or you could choose to put together a giant stick to your ribs feast.  Since Canada is part of the United Kingdom, the breakfast choices included some English seeming choices.  One of which is the choice to have a grilled tomato with breakfast.  Once I discovered this option, I had to have it most mornings that I stayed there.  It was quite delectable with eggs, indeed.

After I stopped going on vacation with my friends to Canada, I forgot about grilled tomatoes as a breakfast side dish.  One weekend at the “In laws”, my boyfriend’s step mom made broiled tomatoes as a side dish for dinner.  They were so good that I had to have seconds.  They were broiled tomatoes with herbs and Parmesan sprinkled on top.  Oh, they were so very yummy.  Roasting the tomatoes for 15 minutes and then broiling the cheese on top gives the tomatoes a wonderful sweet flavor.  They are divine!

I use tomatoes a lot when they are in season and it is rare for me to buy them and then not finish them up for whatever their intended purpose was.  I am a Virgo and adhering to a shopping list and the ensuing plan for the groceries during the week is a must or else I start going a little crazy.  You don’t really want to see me if I start getting a little crazy.  This week I somehow managed to buy too many tomatoes.  When I went in the kitchen to figure out what to eat for breakfast, I realized that if I didn’t do something, I would lose them.  They would eventually spoil.  On the rare occasion that I have tomatoes just milling about the kitchen, I have improvised my own version of broiled tomatoes.  They are amazing as a side dish to eggs and toast.  Just add coffee and a cold glass of OJ and it is fine dining.

I know it is late in the season to be posting a recipe about roasting tomatoes but we are still lucky enough to have the last of the fall tomatoes.  I hit the Farmer’s market after breakfast and decided to replace the tomatoes I used up this morning with a fresh batch.  The heirloom tomatoes are definitely on their way out after a week of chilly, foggy weather.  If you can still get some tomatoes locally or you are someone who doesn’t care how far your tomatoes travel to get to you, roasting them in this fashion should yield a tasty, flavorful side dish even though the tomatoes are starting to be a pale facsimile of their glorious summer selves.  If you have any of these roasted tomatoes leftover, you should use them for a tasty vegetarian sandwich.  I don’t think you’ll end up with any leftovers.

Roasted and broiled tomatoes

3 or 4 large ripe tomatoes, sliced horizontally into 2-3 thick slices.

2 large garlic cloves, minced

Dried basil to taste or fresh basil, minced, to taste

Dried oregano to taste or fresh oregano, minced to taste

Pepper

½ to 1 cup of shredded hard cheese such as Parmesan or Romano

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Use a broiler safe pan that is large enough to accommodate the amount of tomato slices you will have.  I use a well-seasoned iron griddle.  If the pan you are using is something that is not seasoned and sticking could be an issue, oil the pan.  Place the tomato slices on your pan.  Sprinkle them with garlic, basil, oregano and pepper.  Top each herbed tomato slice with a generous mound of cheese.  Bake in the oven for 15 minutes.  Turn on the broiler and broil until cheese melts and browns slightly.  Serve immediately.

Ah.  There is nothing like a lazy Saturday morning for sleeping in late and then leisurely puttering around the kitchen to make something yummy.  I know I am beginning to become in danger of having to rename this blog: “Mimi’s delicious pancake blog”, but as I have said before, breakfast is one of our favorite meals around here and we love our carbs!  Besides.  After eating the uber healthy Uncle Sam cereal with its rolled wheat flakes, whole flax seeds and amazing 10 gm of fiber per serving every morning in a rush before work, you want something good on the weekend!  And after a daily infusion of 10 gm of fiber each day, we deserve something better.  (Watch the fiber comments on my blog R.  I’m watching you! Hee, hee, hee!)

I want to give you a recipe that originally came out of the February 2002 issue of Bon Appetit.  I found this recipe through Epicurious awhile back and made a bunch of healthy changes to it.  According to my notes, I originally used this recipe exclusively with dried blueberries instead of the raisons called for in the original recipe.  I was nearly out of dried blueberries today so I used a few tablespoons of dried blueberries and made up the rest of the cup of dried fruit with currants and cranberries.  These were pure heaven this morning!  With a cup o’ Joe, and a glass of OJ, these cakes really hit the spot!  The bananas make them really moist and the oats give them a chewy, hearty texture reminiscent of oatmeal cookies.  Yum!

One suggestion I want to make that I have learned along the way in my pancake-making journey.  Once the batter is mixed up, let it sit for around ten minutes before you make the pancakes.  Many pancake batters will rise a bit due to the action of the baking powder and baking soda and you will get fluffier pancakes.  In the case of these pancakes, letting the batter sit for a few minutes will help the raw oatmeal and dried fruit soften a bit so that you will get a better texture to these pancakes than if you were to immediately ladle out the batter for cooking.

Banana, dried fruit and oatmeal pancakes

Adapted from the February 2002 issue of Bon Appetit

1 cup old fashioned oats

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp cinnamon

2 large eggs

¾ cup plain yogurt

¾ cup milk

½ tsp vanilla extract

2 ripe bananas, mashed

1 cup dried fruit (blueberries, currants, raisons and cranberries are all good.  Use one kind or a combination)

¼ cup olive oil

butter for frying

In a medium bowl, whisk together the oats, flour, brown sugar, baking power, baking soda and cinnamon.  In a larger bowl, beat the eggs and then whisk in the yogurt, milk and vanilla.  Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined.  Fold in the mashed bananas, dried fruit and oil.  Mix until well combined but don’t over mix.  Let the batter sit for about ten minutes.

Meanwhile, heat an electric pancake griddle to 325 degrees or heat a skillet over medium heat.  Melt a small amount of butter over the surface of your griddle.  Ladle batter onto griddle and cook the pancakes until the edges form bubbles and look dry.  This should take three or four minutes. Turn the pancakes and cook for another one or two minutes.

We make it a practice to visit our local Farmer’s Market every weekend.  One thing we always get is a five to ten pound bag of oranges.  The oranges are wonderful as juice but we also eat them as fresh fruit and I use them in baking.  We ate up all of our leftovers for the week already so I was paging through cookbooks looking for dinner.  I ran into this recipe for mini muffins and it sounded so good that I decided to bake instead of cook.  Luckily my boyfriend volunteered to make egg salad so that we would eat some real food before skipping to dessert.

These muffins are fantastic!  They have a clear, fruity orange flavor without the use of any extracts.  I made a couple of changes to the original recipe.  I used whole-wheat pastry flour instead of white flour.  I also thought ¾ cup of sugar was excessive when the muffins included a glaze so I reduced the sugar.  I did not substitute olive oil for butter as I often do for muffin recipes because the butter sounded like it would compliment the fruit flavor and boy, did it ever!!  I let these muffins be decadent since they would be smaller in size.  It was worth it.

Orange-Poppy Seed Mini Muffins

Adapted from Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Baking

3 tbsp poppy seeds

½ cup milk

1 ¾ cups whole-wheat pastry flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

1 tbsp grated orange zest

2 large eggs

½ cup granulated sugar or evaporated cane juice

6 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

¼ cup plus 1 tbsp fresh squeezed orange juice

½ cup confectioner’s sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Grease 24 mini-muffin cups.  In a small bowl, combine the poppy seeds and the milk.  Let stand for 20 minutes.  In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and orange zest.  In another larger bowl, beat the eggs and then mix in sugar, melted butter, ¼ cup of orange juice and the poppy seed/milk mixture.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until moistened. (Do not over mix).  Spoon the batter into the muffin cups, filling each one three fourths of the way full. Bake 12- 14 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  Let cool for a few minutes.  Mix confectioner’s sugar with 1 tbsp. Orange juice until smooth.  Drizzle the glaze onto the tops of the muffins. 

Hooray for fall!  Although this is the first official day of autumn, we really began to feel the autumn crispness in the air a few days ago and we got the first welcome bit of rain a couple of days ago as well.  The reason I am so happy about the cooling of the air and the meager bit of rain is due to experiencing an extremely dry year that culminated with the Zaca fire, which burned for six weeks, eventually becoming the second largest fire in California history.  The Santa Barbara area was covered in soot and smoke for most of this six week period and everyone was on edge wondering if the fire would be contained, burn right past us into Ventura or come roaring down the mountain range into town.  The air was dry and hot.  The stress was palpable in the air and thoughts of lazy summer days were vanquished. After the fire was contained, we got treated to another fire just north of town in Gaviota which burned for a day and kept half of my coworkers home being that they commute from the north side of our county to work.  So I say, after the summer of fire, bring on the rain!  Bring on the cool, sweater weather!  The soups, the roast meat and veggies, the smell of baking bread and desserts.  I am oh so ready!!

To celebrate the first day of autumn, we decided to make an old standby:  pumpkin pancakes.  I thought I found the original recipe for these in Sunset magazine years ago but I can’t find the recipe online.  In a way these are mine now anyway.  I have made adjustments to the original recipe over the years and I double the recipe to use up the whole can of pumpkin. By doubling the recipe this way, we get around fourteen four-inch pancakes.  We like the leftovers.  The pancakes heat up well in the microwave.  If you are a small family, who doesn’t like leftovers, half the recipe and freeze the other half can of pumpkin puree for a later batch of pancakes.  

Although these pancakes scream out autumn, they are delicious any time of the year so store up a few extra cans of pumpkin, or if you are industrious, make sure you can or freeze some extra homemade pumpkin puree for later.  To tell you the truth, we eat these pancakes all year long just because they are so extremely good.

Just a note before we get to the recipe:  these pancakes and any other pancake that has and will appear on this blog can be made with any kind of white flour.  Do yourself and your loved ones a favor and go get yourself a bag of whole-wheat pastry flour instead.  Whole-wheat pastry flour has all of the same nutritional benefits of stone ground whole-wheat flour including 4 gm of fiber per quarter cup (white flour has less than one gram of fiber per quarter cup).  According to the World’s healthiest food site, whole-wheat flour is good source of manganese, magnesium and tryptophan.  You get these nutrients naturally without the flour having to be fortified with nutrients.

Pumpkin Pancakes

2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour

3-4 tbsp packed brown sugar (depending on how sweet you like your pancakes)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp dried ground ginger

½ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp salt

2 large eggs

1 ½ cups milk

1 15 oz can of pumpkin puree

½ cup plain, nonfat yogurt

4 tbsp olive oil

butter for frying

In a large bowl, stir together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt.  Break up any large clumps of brown sugar with your fingers (although any small remaining clumps will make delicious melted sugar clumps in your pancakes).  In another bowl beat the eggs with a whisk and then whisk in the milk, pumpkin, yogurt and oil until well blended.  Stir the egg mixture into the dry ingredients until just combined.  Let batter sit for a few minutes.  Meanwhile, preheat an electric pancake grill to 325 degrees F.  When the grill is hot, melt the butter onto the grill.  Ladle batter onto the grill and cook the pancakes for two to three minutes until the edges are dry and bubbly.  Turn the pancakes and cook for another one to two minutes.  We have to make these in two batches.  Either serve the first batch of pancakes immediately or store the first batch in a warm (200 degree F.) oven until ready to serve.  Serve with plain yogurt and either maple syrup or applesauce.

Delectible Tidbits has gotten of to a roaring start due to my being a bad vacationer who never manages to go anywhere.  This will be post number seven and day seven of the blog.  Yep.  No tropical resort destinations for this gal.  Just a happy contented feeling to be free to do whatever I want for a couple of weeks and leave the stress of the work day to someone else.  Hopefully, this temporary spate of prolific writing won’t spoil the three or four of you who have discovered my blog so far! Hee, hee, hee…

This week has been about breakfast and baking so far.  Two things that are near and dear to my heart.  Another thing that is near and dear to my heart is visiting our local farmer’s market.  This summer has been a very rewarding summer for fruit around here.  It seems that we had a parade of gorgeous stone fruits and berries all summer and now we are getting treated to figs and apples as we head into fall.  For the past month as the apple season has begun to intersect with the berry season, I have been playing around with fruit compotes for our weekend pancake feasts.  I have been making these compotes a little on the tart side so that we can spoon them over the yogurt-topped pancakes and then pour maple syrup on top and not lose the fragrant fruit flavor or the tangy bite.

For the past two weeks, I have been purchasing blackberries specifically for this purpose because the blackberry compote I put together was so good it needed a second appearance on our table.  Previous to this I made compote out of apricots and plums.  I have a bad habit of buying too much fruit for two people to eat and then forgetting about it.  I realized that I had apricots and plums ready to go to waste and scrambled to do something about it.  The result was another equally wonderful version of the recipe I will post for you today.  If you want to try using stone fruit, make the following changes:  substitute stone fruit for the blackberries (If memory serves me correctly, think I used 3 apricots and 8 small plums, pitted and skins left on).  I used one small apple instead of two and substituted apple juice for orange juice; the orange zest was omitted but would still be good if you want to include it.

Tart Blackberry compote:

2 pints fresh blackberries

The juice and zest of one orange

2 small apples, peeled and finely diced

2 allspice berries*

1 cinnamon stick

2 tbsp or more honey**

Combine all of the ingredients in a 1 ½ quart saucepan.  Bring to a boil and then lower to a strong simmer.  Simmer, stirring occasionally for about a half an hour or until the sauce thickens considerably.  During the simmering time, start adding the honey a teaspoon at a time.  Taste the compote before you add each subsequent teaspoon.  Depending on the sweetness of the fruit you may want more or less honey than I recommend.  Remember, you want a sauce with a concentrated fruit flavor and a bit of tartness.  Also, during the simmering time, crush some of the diced apple against the side of the pan.  This will help release the natural pectin in the apples and help thicken the compote a bit.

*When the compote is done, you may wish to remove the cinnamon stick.  When I made the plum/apricot version of the compote, I could see the allspice berries and remove them.  It is nearly impossible to find them in the blackberry version.  Warn the people sharing this with you that they may bite down on a strong spice.  The allspice berries will swell and soften so they should not be dangerous to anyone’s teeth but there will be a surprise burst of flavor.

**The compote will concentrate which is why I suggest adding the honey a teaspoon at a time until you get the right sweetness for your palate.  If you don’t like tart sauce add more honey.  We intended to use maple syrup on top of this sauce on top of pancakes so a tart compote was desirable for this use.  If you want to use the compote on ice cream, a tart sauce would also be a good contrast to the sweetness of your dessert.