Progress through pancakes

There are points in ones life where you have traveled far enough down a particular road to be able to make something which tangibly demonstrates progress.
For some that may be babies, a house, winning a gold medal but in the humble world of this cook it is the pancake.

Not just any pancake mind you but a mother fluffy pancake, the kind of pancake that if making pancakes was an Olympic sport these are the ones that the Chinese and East Germans would come up with. These are pancakes that beg to be drug tested.
But let’s begin at the beginning, as a young kid who is interested in cooking there are really only a couple of things one can reliably attempt on their own without risking life, limb or property, the allure of whisking things and cracking eggs make pancakes an attractive childhood recipe, they certainly were for me. Both my parents worked so on summer holidays or late at night when parents assumed we were asleep I would try and make pancakes for my brother and I. John liked them thin like crepes and so did I generally because, never being able to remember exactly how to make pancakes, not having actually been given a recipe I’d always struggle to remember exactly how much of everything should go in them. Was is plain flour or self raising? How many eggs should I use? How much milk? Do I really need sugar? Sometimes I would crack it and make at least edible pancakes that would pass muster with the brother. Though more and more I’m convinced that his pleas of “No you make them yours are good” were just because he was too lazy to make them himself much like the time he emotionally blackmailed me into sewing on his cub scout badges one Wednesday morning by looking sad and mournfully entreating “But all the other mothers do it” I’m 11 months younger than he is so that never should have worked but what can I say, I’m a sucker for a quivering bottom lip. I do remember horrible pancakes that I’d made though, pancakes so heavy you could have used them to retread mining trucks, pancakes that cracked and bounced like paper pulp when you tried to fold them over.
There seems to be a two party divide when it comes to pancakes as there is in a number of elements in life, left or right, scrunch or fold, cat or dog, thick or thin.
People seem to be very loyal to their breed of pancake, those who favor thin look at you like you’ve just admitted to marrying your midget, hermaphrodite first cousin from Omaha if you align yourself with the thicker pancake. I asked a number of people for their preferences in order to come up with some kind of refined egalitarian pancake that would appeal to everybody and came to the conclusion that the problem that those in the thin camp had with thick pancakes were that they were often inordinately heavy, there is such a thing as too much pancake so I needed to find a way of encompassing the fluffiness of the thick pancake with the lightness of the thin. There was one tip I got a while back that seemed to work and that was lemonade, instead of using milk in the batter lemonade gave you both lift and a certain amount of sweetness which seemed to be successful when tested on willing lab rats at the time but it still wasn’t quite what I was looking for.
What finally cracked it for me though was a trip to little B &B at the foot of Mount Macedon one weekend with my sister in law and the kids. It was a gorgeous little place, open fire, quiet gardens, chicken coop that the kids would obsessively check for eggs, exactly the kind of place I’d love to run myself one day. My sister in law had the bacon and eggy type breakfast with all the usual accoutrements, me not being a fan of eggs I tend to miss out on the whole full breakfast ritual so the kids and I had pancakes instead.
There are rare but blessed occasions where I’ve had meals that were a revelation to me, the first time I had Kangaroo at the now defunct Bistro Inferno on Brunswick street in the 90’s, the first time I had kippers when I was three, the pea puree and soufflé at Bistro Vue, these pancakes now enter into this category. But first a moment on the bacon that came with them, a happily unexpected bonus as though god himself came down and said “Here’s a treat, you’re doin ok kid”.
I’ve gone on about bacon before, its one of the main things that prevents me from being vegetarian, I thought I’d found some damn fine bacon and had been putting myself through the emotional rigors of the polish deli for a number of years in order to get it, now I feel as if all that was wasted time, like finally breaking out of a volatile relationship my eyes have been opened and I just cant go back there now. I have resigned myself to living with the prospect of infrequent bacon at least until I can ingratiate myself to the owner and find out who she buys it from.
Now to the pancakes, they were cheerily yellow from the free range eggs that the kids had been scaring out of the chickens for the last 20 mins, just a little crispy on the edges and soft and fluffy like soufflé on the inside.
The secret, egg whites, that’s it, egg whites, separate your eggs and beat the whites then fold them in to the rest of the mix at the end. Why hadn’t I thought of this before.
I had to come up with a recipe quick to restore my dignity. And so I did and now I will post it below for you to appropriate as you wish, if you already knew about this, you’ve been holding out on me and I am deeply displeased with you, for those of you that didn’t enjoy them in good health. I served mine with a burnt caramel ice cream that I’d found an old milk bar recipe for and though I would make for a friend who likes caramel but cant eat it because the commercial ones have gluten in them, its very easy to make and beautifully rich.

Mother Fluffy Pancakes (Makes about 8 medium sized pancakes)

1 cup plan flour, if your making gluten free ones as I have you can use the same quantity of self raising gluten free flour.
1 cup buttermilk,
2 egg yolks and 3 egg whites
Half a cup of caster sugar

Separate the egg whites from the yolks and add about half of the quantity of sugar. Beat til stuff peaks form then mix the yolks, buttermilk, flour and remaining sugar until smooth and then fold in the egg whites. Heat a fry pan on a low to medium heat with a little butter and then ladle in the mix, the mix is fairly velvety due to the egg whites so it wont spread out in the pan at all but because they stay really high and fluffy you really only need one ladle and want to keep them small. Usually the way to tell if a pancake is cooked is by seeing airbubbles form on the uncooked surface of the pancakes but you wont see that so much with these ones you want them to be a little soft like soufflés in the middle so look instead for the edges of the pancake to get golden or shake the pan a little when the pancake moves freely on the surface then its cooked on the bottom and you can flip it. I haven’t included spices in this recipe though I normally use vanilla, this is up to you. Try cinnamon or nutmeg or anything you’d like really. Serve immediately.

Burnt Caramel Ice Cream

2/3 cup of caster sugar
1 cup milk
1 cup thin cream
6 egg yolks

Melt the sugar in a heavy bottomed saucepan until it turns a dark gold colour, take it off the heat and gradually stir in the milk and cream. The caramel will get hard and at this point it will all seem like a horrible mess and you will curse me as you wonder how you will ever get your sauce pan clean but take it back to the heat, just a medium heat, and stir and you’ll find that the caramel will melt again into the milk and cream and everything will be fine, trust me. Whisk the egg yolks in a heat proof bowl until pale and then stir in the hot caramel milk mixture a little at a time otherwise you will scramble the eggs. Pour everything back into the sauce pan and heat over a low flame until the custard coats the back of a spoon. Strain the mix and let cool, if you’ve got an ice cream maker then you just follow the manufacturers directions to make the ice cream otherwise put into a covered container and place in the freezer, after a few hours take out and break it up with a fork or electric mixer if your feeling slack. Put back in the freezer and freeze again for another few hours then do the same thing all over again. You know you can probably get an ice cream maker from the good guys for like $30 bucks, they even make shrek ones now. After you’ve done your freezy frezzy beat up thing for the second time put it back in the freezer for another 8 hours until the ice cream is firm. Really, its $30 bucks and you get ice cream in like 20 mins, they’re fantastic things you can even make sorbet.