My Pancake-Maker

Today I will tell a story about my pancake-maker (I should name it). My pancake maker has heated up a lot of food for me over the past two months, and I honestly don't know what I'd do without it (perhaps use TJ's microwave? You can't toast bread in a microwave, though. Nor can you make tofu with grilled cheese. Or cheese crisps to garnish the cheesy-tofu, as pictured).

My pancake-maker is by Toastmaster, and it's white and has four mini-pancake compartments. There is no on/off switch; literally 15 seconds after I plug it in, the surface is piping hot. I can plop whatever I want onto the pan, lower the lid, and let it sit there for a few minutes (or until stuff starts smoking). Sometimes, I unplug the pancake maker and leave the food there for 10 minutes, because my pancake maker cools down really slowly, so food continues to cook even though there is no electricity powering it anymore.

In the mornings, I slice bagels and let the pancake maker toast them. Other times, I sandwich in tofu meatballs, sandwiches, cookies, eggs, frozen pizza, and pancake batter (obviously). The more adventurous things I've thrown onto my pancake maker include pears, rice (tedious, unless you're cracking an egg onto it. Otherwise, it's a pain scooping the rice out),  spaghetti (bad idea -- maybe farfalle would be better, but thin spaghetti is really irksome to pick up), and collard greens.

I think this is the best thing I've bought for $1. It cranks up the heat, is easy, is fast. It was inexpensive, does everything I want, and is willing to try everything too, and it doesn't matter if it gets dirty or if pancake batter  gets plastered onto the edges. It's is reliable, loyal, and serves me well. It makes me happy. I think that out of context, I could be describing either a significant other or a prostitute.

Dorayaki

The last time I had dorayaki was some point 4 or 5 years ago, from Maxim's Bakery in Hong Kong. It was something like $4.50 or $5.50 HKD for a big red bean or peanut butter filled dorayaki. So, you can imagine my excitement before trying these mini chocolate dorayaki! For those who don't know, dorayaki is a Japanese pancake thing; there are two cakey, moist pancakes, with red bean paste (or something else) sandwiched in the middle. Doraemon loves dorayaki. I don' really have an emotional attachment to them, though.

The name of the brand is "very cute", which is kinda ... well, cutesy.

Unfortunately, this dorayaki was too crumbly and dry. The filling tasted nothing like chocolate; instead, it tasted of red bean paste (which is still good, though).

Pancakes!

I found someone selling a pancake maker for $1 on Craigslist last month in Center City. I lugged that pancake maker from 13th St. all the way back to my apartment. Last Saturday, I dragged the pancake maker all the way back to NJ.

I don't need a pancake maker, obviously. I don't care if my pancakes are rectangular or cloud-shaped, or if they're a tad burnt. I just figured that $1 is a nice price to pay for a non-stick electric saucepan with 4 circular compartments. In college, I can now fry eggs, make pan pizzas, create grilled cheese sandwiches and heat up cookies, all in my room! Which will be very nice.

At the urging of my sister, I made pancakes today. I was going to follow this recipe completely, because I do want to try Drop Scones. Unfortunately, my brother had finished the milk last night. So, here's the modified recipe that worked out alright and yielded dry pancakes. Next time, I will definitely follow the above recipe, but since I appeased my sister, all is well.

Ingredients - 20 pancakes
250 g self raising flour (it has salt included)
25 g sugar
4 eggs
170 g raspberry yoghurt (which includes 26 g sugar)
30 g water
25 g melted butter
vanilla (to appease my sister)
frozen blueberries (to appease my brother)

Look at how pointy the tip of this egg is!

Method
1. Sift dry ingredients.
2. Melt butter and add all wet ingredients.

3. Scoop 1.5 tbsp (2 tbsp is okay. 3 is tolerable.) of batter onto pancake maker and let it cook until it poofs up and looks cooked. This takes about a minute.

Things I'm going to have to change next time to make myself happy:

1. Use 200 ml (whole?) milk, of course, instead of the yoghurt-that-no-one-eats-but-my-mum-buys-it-anyway-due-to-advertising-and-familiarity.

2. No vanilla or blueberries. I want to make perfect plain pancakes before I start with the flavourings.

3. Don't melt the butter. Cut the butter in. I really don't like melting butter. The smell is putrid, it looks like adipose tissue, and I might as well use oil if I want to melt butter! I guess it's just preference.

4. Use less sugar and less butter

5. No water.

Snow White -- Pancake-style!!

Today, I am going to blog post about a social event that seriously lacks anything science-y or thoughtful. It is just a story that shows how food brings people together. I actually have a systematic review to write up too for Nutrition, but I'll get to that later today. Now. Storytime!!

Once upon a time, there were 8 people. They weren't dwarves though. They were named Popcorn, MC, MK, MA, MM, KB, CL, and me. MA never turned up though. Anyway, the 7 remaining people decided to make some pancakes on the Sunday after Fling.

There were delicious and plentiful pancakes with a whole box of batter to spare! There were sticks of butter and packages of frozen fruit! There was jalapeno jam and a packet of peanut butter.

MK accidentally poured some oil onto the electric stove. It was a terribly funny but terribly terrible move. The first batch of pancakes were also literally dripping with oil, but that was okay because it meant that they were easy to flip. (When I make pancakes...I add oil to the batter instead...) The first experimental batch were filled with orange/banana/strawberry juice and strawberries and KB and Popcorn loved them. Thus, we were happy.

The second batch of pancakes were filled with M&Ms, and MM and I loved them.

Some of the pancakes were ugly, but the others were beautiful. No one cared, no one judged, and no one said no to more.

The jalapeno jam was delicious!

The M&M pancakes (3 of them) shared between MM and me were the best; they were fluffy and rainbow-coloured and made by Popcorn. Popcorn, CL, KB and I made many of the pancakes.

Popcorn also made some mini blueberry pancakes, and we ultimately also had some blackberry ones.

And so, we were all happy and sated college kids, so KB and I started to do the dishes.

Suddenly, Popcorn exclaimed that she wanted a blueberry pancake!

When KB offered to make one for Popcorn, Popcorn declined the offer because we had already started the dishes. KB, however, decided to make some batter and to make an extra-nice blueberry pancake for Popcorn, because Popcorn had cooked the majority of the pancakes.

So, as we all relaxed and I washed dishes, KB prepared blueberry pancake batter and poured it on a pan.

Suddenly, I turned to see smoke billowing out of the pan and an acrid smell filled the room! The batter had fallen onto the electric stove, and it was bubbling! To make matters worse, the pancake on the pan was smoking too! I immediately opened three windows and KB turned the pancake onto a plate, and we both stood next to the window, with our arms outstretched, letting the smoky pancake and the smoky pan emit their smoke and repugnant smells onto those outside on the street. As we waited for the pancake to cool, we all laughed at the silly situation. Please. Laugh. Make us feel less stupid about this situation.

Now, the Snow White part sets in.

As I went back to doing the dishes, Popcorn ate some pancake...

...and realised that it tasted soapy.

So she ran to the sink and started to get rid of the soapy taste from her mouth, while we all laughed hysterically while our friend nearly choked/got poisoned/got hospitalised/died.

For that pancake, KB had used a soap-filled pan that hadn't yet been washed.

December Birthday Parties!

Every month, my dorm house has a celebration for birthdays. This month's party was the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, with a lot of food. There were M&M pancakes, carrot cake, lemon bars, chocolate cake, chocolate mousse [simply amazing!] and potato latkes.

Here is a terrible photo of the chocolate cake, carrot cake, lemon bar, and a peek of the peak of chocolate mousse. I completely forgot to take pictures of the latkes, but they were really thinly grated pieces of potato [think cheddar-cheese-sized pieces], fried in hot oil until orangy brown. For some reason, they tasted fishy to me, so I stayed away from them. I don't think that there was any fish in it, though.

The M&M pancakes made the pancakes really blue. Although it's not shown well on the camera, the pancakes were literally sky-blue coloured. They were delicious, though, and at some point, CG made a square pancake. I didn't take a picture of it, though, but MF did. So, I'm not going to upload it because it isn't my picture. However, I can say that it was a square pancake, perhaps 30cm x 30cm, with a smiley face dented into it.

Then I went to Double Dinner Friday, which was completely amazing but I didn't bring my camera, so next time I'll take pictures of the food [but really, it's all packaged carbohydrate material]

Chocolate Chip Pancakes!

It's actually the 19th but I shall post this as the 18th.

For dinner I went out to eat pancakes with BV. We went to the Ritz Diner... because where else do you find chocolate chip pancakes at 8pm? Yes, PM, not AM. An amazing but sugar-crashing-filled meal. Seriously, by the time I was halfway through the pancakes, I had a huge sugar rush and I felt all hyper and sleepy at the same time. Which is how I felt on the night of graduation. Anyway.

When the waitress asked us what we wanted and we both said pancakes [I got two pancakes, he got three. I know that three is a LOT of pancakes, since last time, I got three blueberry pancakes and even though my brother ate some of it, we still didn't finish it...so that's my experience with food from the Ritz. It's a rule. You can't finish a plate of it in one sitting. This was proven true again since BV didn't finish his pancakes, and nor did I. Again.]

The chocolate chip pancakes are fabled to be amazing. That's what I had learned from people but not from experience two years ago from after Counties in Spring Track. I personally think that they are deliciously fluffy pancakes [not boiling-water-spattering like the blueberry ones] and not too sweet, which meant that the syrup filled all the spongy cavities in the dough. They were also neither extremely eggy nor gluteny, which I like. I noticed that the chocolate chips only appeared on the underside of each pancake, though, which I suppose helps the chocolate chips not stick to the griddle.

The people at the Ritz are nice.

Amazing day.

Berry Nice Morning.

With ice cream dollop.
Without ice ceam dollop.

I'm gonna let two grad parties slide [too many pictures]... and instead talk about berry pancakes and smoothies. Yesterday morning, my brother and I went to JM's house to make some berry smoothies for breakfast and watch the movie 21. We brought along a lot of raspberries, some gooseberries, and a few blueberries from our yard. JM has this mulberry tree, so the smoothies we made ended up being berry berryful. Actually, I can't really take credit for what JM's sister and my brother made, with milk and ice and berries. Oh, and maple ice cream, once we realised that the smoothie tasted way too sour without a shot of sugar.

JM and I, on the other hand, made some berry pancakes with the leftovers. We used this flat-pancake recipe but omitted the baking powder because apparently last time, the pancakes had turned out sour. JM actually has a griddle! GRIDDLES ARE AMAZING! Although I never butter or oil the pan when making pancakes, JM does. I personally didn't see much of a difference...

The only problem with not having some sort of raising agent was that they tasted more like crepes, and the berries had to be flattened in order to actually get something that looked uniformly flat. Actually, we had dumped in too many berries in the first place, and there proberry ["probably"] was more berry than batter. I liked that they weren't sweet, though.

It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning :)