and things went downhill from there

I did some more fiddling with that pancake recipe I posted about here the other day.

The two changes I made were to add a bit of sugar to the dry mix, and then substitute almond flour for the regular flour. My reasoning was that since I was using almond milk anyway, that I may as well double down and use almond flour. If I try this again, I may do some research for an egg substitute as well.

I'd still cook them in butter, though, because that stuff is amazing.

I mixed everything up, and am pleased to announce that it was an unmitigated success ... failure ... mixed bag. I discovered that the almond flour browns faster than regular flour does, so the pancakes were turning too dark before they had a chance to cook all the way through. The first one ended up more the consistency of a crepe than a pancake. The second one was still a bit undercooked in the middle. By the time I got to the third, I had lowered the temperature, and covered the pan for the first part of cooking. It was the best of the lot.

I think the key takeaway for next time (because there will be a next time) is that I will start at a lower temperature, and cover them for the cooking process.

The texture was a bit strange, and it will take some work to master the cooking of them, but these pancakes were delicious. These were not my prettiest pancakes ever, but they are the best tasting ones I've produced.

My brother died on Tuesday, right on schedule. The family is as much stunned by the suddenness of it as we are by the loss. He went from feeling a bit off one day to dead from cancer in just six weeks.

His diagnosis got delayed a bit because so much of the medical system is tied up dealing with pandemic cases, but the cancer was so aggressive that they don't think an earlier diagnosis would have made a difference to the outcome.

I am still trying to resolve myself to what has happened, and I don't think it is going to truly hit home until we next visit the west coast. Visiting this brother was always one of my top priorities on these trips, and his absence is going to hit like me like a truck.

Moving on ...

I've been getting lots of practise cooking since I retired, and I'm starting to become more confident in my skills. I am starting to move away from leaning on recipes for everything because I'm starting to get a good feel for how the ingredients interact with each other.

On Thursday I made a goat & yam curry in the pressure cooker. I glanced at a couple of recipes to get a feel for proportions and timing, but I winged it from there. The result was really good. Goat is one of those meats that can really dominate a dish if you let it, but I managed to tame it in this dish. You can still taste it, but the curry tastes of goat, not GOAT.

While I was bandying breakfast ideas about in my head this morning, I noticed that I had nearly used up the fancy, organic, whole milk we bought last weekend (we usually don't go for the fancy stuff, but we bought what was available - and this milk was notably good. It was lighter in colour and sweeter than the usual milk we buy - something to be said for grass-fed). I figured there was enough milk left to make pancakes for one (atara had already fed herself this morning).

Normally, the first thing I would do for pancakes is pull out a recipe, but I thought, "Eh - I know what goes into pancakes. I don't need no stinkin' recipe."

I poured the milk into a mixing bowl, added an egg, some vanilla, agave syrup, vanilla extract, and what I thought looked like enough vegetable oil. I whisked that together, then grabbed the sifter and started sifting in flour until it looked like about enough. I mixed that together, whisked in a bit more flour because was a tad too soupy, then added what looked like sufficient baking powder, baking soda and salt.



This was the last pancake of the batch, and the picture does not do it justice. It has a slight crease in it because the pan I used was too small, and I had trouble getting the spatula under it to flip it (and I'm not practised, nor coordinated enough to flip them without a turner without it ending in tragedy). I daresay these are the best-tasting (non-buttermilk) pancakes I have made to date. They were fluffy, but not quite as airy as others that I have made. I think that I could have addressed that if I had added a touch less agave syrup, and a touch more oil.

That said, i would be quite content if my next batch replicated this recipe exactly.