Soft griddle-fried "cakes", crispy on the edges, and drenched in syrup. A breakfast classic (please see note below). That's what pancakes are to me and I love them. Whatever version or incarnation, I enjoy these guys: thick, spongy American style flapjacks; light, thin crepes with a myriad of possible fillings; dutch pancakes; little silver dollars; Breton galettes; banana pancakes from Boracay...you name it.
I do, however, have a wee bit of trouble making them myself. They just refuse to turn out! Fortunately, the food blog universe has conspired to send me a number of pancake recipes to try. The first batch I tried out came from Nicky of the wonderful and gorgeous blog Delicious Days. You can find the recipe here. It's for Raspberry Pecan Pancakes, but I left out the raspberries and the pecans because I didn't have them, and I also wanted to try it at its basic minimal form.
The pancakes had a good combo of chewy-ness and sponge, with just a fairy touch of sweetness from the vanilla sugar (I love this ingrdient!), but not too much as the lusciousness of it all comes out when you drench these babies in their sticky-sweet coating. I used a mixture of maple syrup and my favorite stroop, after slathering on some butter.
I do seem to have a heavy mixing hand (I try to be light and graceful, but Audrey Hepburn I am not) so these possibly should have been lighter than what I turned out. Nicky (or anyone)...suggestions to this effect (or any other effect) are welcome!
Like I said, I discovered a lot of pancake recipes in food-blog-landia. So I may do a "series-within-a-series" and post all my trials and triumphs of the pancake kind here on this blog...hmmm...definitely an idea worth toying with. A pancake-marathon. Pancake-a-palooza.
Thanks Nicky for the great recipe! Will try them with pecans next time...raspberries are more of a "now-you-see-them-now-you-don't" kind of fruit here as they are imported from Australia and you can never guess when they will suddenly make an appearance.
Note: Pancakes, or some form of them, are eaten all over the world. But not all are eaten at breakfast. Please read here for more information on the wonderful world of pancakes. I love cultural diversity...it's what makes all of us so interesting to each other...and in this case, it gives me an excuse to eat pancakes at every meal (plus dessert)!