Sunday, August 28, 2011

Pancakes Fail

I promised myself when I started this blog that if I failed to make a perfect meal, even if I failed MISERABLY, I would still post about it. Partially because I am, after all, rating recipes...and also because I know that every single person fails at cooking sometimes and it's nothing to be ashamed of.

Disclaimer: I'm almost POSITIVE this failure was due to my own ineptitude, not the recipe. But I'll try it again soon and letcha know. ;)

So this recipe is from the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook. You can also find it on her blog's website, here: http://veganyumyum.com/2008/02/easy-weekend-pancakes/


Easy Weekend Pancakes


Ingredients:
1 1/2 Cup Soymilk
1 Tbs Sugar
2 Tbs Oil
1 Cup Spelt (or all-purpose*) Flour
1/3 Cup All-Purpose Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Salt
1 tsp Extract (any flavor, I used orange, but vanilla is a no-brainer)
1-2 Tbs water, to thin batter if needed

Now here's what you do. You preheat the oven to 200 degrees and find an oven-proof plate. This will be so you can create your stack o' pancakes and keep them warm while you cook the rest of them. Nobody wants a cold little pancake on the bottom of a stack of pipin' hot pancakes. That's just awk.

Now, Lauren's pancakes were purposefully made in a blender so that you can store them overnight and have the batter all rarin to go first thing in the morning. It was already morning for me and I thought I could just mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and have at it. Maybe this recipe gets it's magic from chilling overnight...

Things I did differently (that I won't do next time because I want to see if what I did was foolish / ruined this recipe):

1. I used coconut milk instead of soy milk. This usually isn't a problem for me, but who knows?
2. I used all-purpose flour and NO spelt flour.
3. I did not thin out the batter with water because the recipe mentioned to do that so as to thin out the batter that had thickened overnight, and I wasn't keeping the batter overnight.

So anywho, I mixed all the ingredients besides the water in a big bowl.




Then, I made some pancakes! :)

On medium heat, pour your batter into an ungreased nonstick skillet. You know what to do from here. :)



Unfortunately for me, I don't know what went wrong...maybe I should have thinned out the batter a little more. But my pancakes were thick, dense, oddly bubbly, and fall-apart-y. They also stuck to the pan.

Here's what I got:


Not so pretty. What a pathetic excuse for a pancake.

RATINGS:

Deliciousness: 2/5 
An awkward taste. Chewy, dense (not fluffy), and a little too sweet? Or something? Awkward. Possibly salvageable, but I will have to make a hella-thin pancake next time.

Ease of Preparation: 5/5 
If it were a delicious meal, this would be my go-to breakfast treat because it's so quick....

Prettiness: 1/5 
You saw that blob, right? That is one pancake that will never be able to get a pancake date.

3 comments:

  1. That happened to me once as well. It was when I used a recipe from PETA's college cookbook. I was upset because I missed pancakes and I was worried they couldn't be veganized very weel. I have, however, made successful pancakes since then using other recipes!

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  2. The same pancake fail happened to me today, and I found this googling "pancake failures" to find out what I did wrong. My pancakes usually turn out fine, but today they did just what yours did. The only thing I did differently is I mixed my baking soda, powder and salt in a huge bowl to save myself the step of measuring three things out in the morning.

    I noticed that your recipe doesn't call for baking soda. This seems like a mistake, usually you need both. I'm wondering my soda sifted to the bottom of the bowl overnight and I didn't get any in the batter.

    On another note, I'm not vegan but my pancakes are. I keep a sourdough starter and I use the discards to make pancakes in the morning. I just add oil, baking soda, baking powder and salt. The sour flavor of the starter is tasty enough without any kind of milk or extract or such and such. :)

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  3. 3 Studies PROVE How Coconut Oil Kills Waist Fat.

    This means that you literally burn fat by eating coconut fat (including coconut milk, coconut cream and coconut oil).

    These 3 studies from major medical journals are sure to turn the traditional nutrition world upside down!

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