This weekends breakfasts, and mastering pancakes...

Grade B is different than Grade A. I don't think one is better than another as long as both are of comparable quality. Have you ever tried Grade C? Yeeow!

While I'm a big advocate of using organic ingredients, I've yet to understand what makes real maple syrup organic or not. The trees just grow naturally, don't they?

Last question first, Shel.

Some people do manage their sugar bushes with chemical sprays and the like, which would remove the syrup from the organic classification. Others don't use chemicals but are not certified, so can't use the label.

As to grades A and B, B is darker, richer, and more, oh, I guess acrid, is the word. I've always preferred it. But until fairly recently, when the celebrity chefs started touting it, you couldn't get it outside of New England and Upstate New York, where it was a secret held by the locals.

I could (but won't) name several chefs who, in the past, specifically bad-mouthed grade B, and wouldn't have it in their restaurants. Now they're talking about it as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

A wonderful thing, culinary fashion. :rolleyes:

They look delicious but they seem very thick - Did they come up very airy or are they dense like bread? And what do you cook them in - butter? Veg oil?

I will have to make these despite the fact that my husband dislikes all sweet things (he's weird).

uhmmmmmm, in a discussion of maple syrup, what is a "sugar bush"?

being really old fashioned - "maple syrup" I know comes from "maple trees" and any of which size can be "tapped" to gather the "sap" which gets boiled down into "syrup" is not a "plant" of a size most people would describe as "bush" . . .

what on earth has hit the market now? chinese faux-bush psuedo-maple sugar water?

>uhmmmmmm, in a discussion of maple syrup, what is a "sugar bush"?<

The group of trees a farmer taps (or has in reserve) for maple syrup are, collectively, referred to as a sugar bush.

Looks good. Pancakes are one of those things that are quite easy to make and very satisfying, a simple pleasure. Made a nice batch a couple sundays ago, quite tasty. And like the ones in your photos, the finished items were thick, but light and fluffy. Good stuff.

I hate to admit this, but it has been years since I've had some decent, real maple syrup. Lately it has been the caramel colored, high frcutose food like products readily found on megamart shelves. Actually Log Cabin still lists real maple syrup in the ingredient list, so it isn't all bad.

I think, though, that you might have a problem with your camera, or the software loading pictures, something is really screwed up with the colors. I'm assuming the liquid in the tall white cups is coffee, but it should be dark and black. In your photos it seems pale and, well, milky. Yuck.

mjb.

WHY?! I may be wrong, as it's been a while since I looked, but the last time I looked the ingredient list did not include real maple syrup, but maple flavor. I believe fenugreek is in there as well. It's funny, since Log Cabin started out selling pure maple syrup, that they just recently introduced Log Cabin Pure Maple syrup, "made with only Grade A, Dark Amber maple syrup."

Pinnacle Foods, the maker of Log Cabin, also owns Mrs. Butterworth and Aunt Jemima.

I grew up with Log Cabin - in those days the syrup came in a small tin shaped like a log cabin.

"I think, though, that you might have a problem with your camera, or the software loading pictures, something is really screwed up with the colors. I'm assuming the liquid in the tall white cups is coffee, but it should be dark and black. In your photos it seems pale and, well, milky. Yuck.

mjb.[/quote]

Yuck is not a nice thing to say about somebody's breakfast or coffee preferances. There are lots of folks who enjoy their coffee this way.

So can we start another debate :D?? Maybe the kind of nitpicking little points that really don't amount to a hill of beans in the real world.

The first photo of the finished pancakes indicated two things to me based on what I was taught about making pancakes.

1.) There was too much fat on the griddle as indicated by the lacy pattern on the surface of the pancake.

2.) The color indicates that the griddle was a bit too hot.

I only bring this up for a couple of reasons. One being that I was taught these things as a kid and then ran into the same lessons as an adult cooking in a couple of different restaurants. The second reason--I'm hoping RPMc will make another batch or two and post more pictures!!!:bounce: I really do like your cooking projects RPMc.

Yes, I know. Otherwise there'd be no point in poking fun at their preferences :) And I do mean it as fun, I certainly don't mean to actually offend anyone.

Years ago when I was doing a lot of backcountry skiing and overnight winter camps in the mountains above town, I made a breakfast drink that would probably make me hurl these days. A big cup, lots of hot water, a package of instant cocoa mix, a couple tablespoons of instant coffee and a huge blob of butter. Sometimes a small handful of raisins stirred in. Not exactly the low cal diet drink. But it was the sort of thing you needed if you were planning to burn a few thousand calories over the next couple of hours by climbing to ridgetops and skiing down through the untracked powder. Those were the days.

mjb.

Ahhh, the good old days of drinking butter. Now it's my turn to say yuck. :bounce:

One vote for coffee-with-milk - in fact, lots of milk with the coffee. In fact, maybe a little coffee in the milk.

Other than that, those pancakes look really nice. I usually don;t like them too thick but i think i'll try next time.

The reason you got an uneven color on the tops of your pancakes is that there's too much butter on your griddle, and the pancakes went on while the griddle was too hot. Fine look for a crepe, but not for a diner pancake. Alton couldn't figure it out either.

If you care about an even GBD top, next time, sacrifice a big pancake to absorb some of the heat and butter; and as soon as it comes off start your production line.

IMO your batter was still a little too lumpy for perfection. Over-mixing is to be avoided, yes. But they'd be more tender with a little more mixing than you gave them. A good test is lift the whisk from the batter and write a five letter word with the stream which drips off it, onto the top of the batter in the bowl. You could use the name, "Robby" if you like -- just to pick one at random. In that case, the "R" should be still visible, but almost faded, as you finish the loop of the "y."

The one thing you want to make sure about pancakes is: Always drink the OJ first. Nothing tastes worse than OJ after syrup.

I prefer my coffee as black espresso 300 days of the year, and plain black coffee for 53 more, thank you. But yours looked like a nice, once a month, change up. Hot mocha ice cream.. There are worse things.

BDL

For years I've been drinking my coffee black, and still do. However, every now and then some dairy in the coffee is nice, and I had been using milk for that purpose. It left something to be desired - it diluted the coffee taste and seemed thin and watery. Recently I discovered cream - nice, thick, rich, full fat cream. Wow! What a difference. Now only good quality heavy cream is used in my coffee for those times when I don't want it black.

Belive it or not, I use cream for health reasons as well as for taste. Ain't that a stitch!

You might like to try something I experimented with a couple of weeks ago. I heated up some milk in a pot just so it got nice and hot but didn't boil or scald. I then dumped in some fresh ground coffee - a dark roast that had lots of flavor. I let the coffee steep in the milk for a while - maybe two minutes - didn't time it. Then I poured the coffee through a filter into my favorite mug, and it was pretty good. I need to experiment a little more with the proportions and timing, but the first try resulted in a very satisfactory result.

Actually, that would be more similar to a caffelatte as i used to make here before i found a place that had american roast coffee, and bought a braun coffeemaker. I know, i know, what heresy, here i am in italy, americans are all copying espresso (and making it badly, by the way - but maybe i'll make a separate thread for that under beverages) but i really don;t like the burnt coffee bean taste. (And the caffelatte is made with a small amount of espresso in a cup of hot milk.)
I'm also heretic in that i drink coffee only with milk, making anyone i go to a restaurant with squirm with embarrassment if i ask for a cappuccino after dinner. NObody drinks cappuccino after a meal, it's only for morning.

I also like my coffee really milky, but i really don;t want to drink all that much milk. I seem to need lots of liquid in the morning (all day for that matter) - i also drink lots of tea with milk - as it is i'm drinking a liter a day, which is probably already excessive. Anyway, i like the american coffee because i can make the cup be half water that way.
I don;t really like cream in my coffee, shel, because i feel it greasy, like putting butter in it. It kind of makes me feel queasy.
All a matter of taste and habit i guess.
The funny thing is i LOVE coffee, just that i love it my way. I certainly don;t expect anyone else to like it my way. But i will tell you how to get a good espresso or cappuccino even in a starbucks.

It could be worse. One of my fellow climbers from back in those days knew an ice climber who would munch on cold, raw bacon slices as a snack during ascents. Yum yum.

Gee, I'm kind of straying away from the topic of pancakes, sorry.

mjb.

Hi RPMcM
I was intrigued by your recipe - well actually your pictures - maybe because it's a while i haven't made pancakes (and where i live either i make them or i don;t eat them) and the picture reminded me of how much i like them. So this morning, being sunday, i made pancakes using your recipe. I have a few comments on the results.

1, yes, you can see you had too much butter in your picture of the griddle with the pancakes cooking, you should wipe the griddle with a paper towel and it won't give you that fried edge of the pancake - the dark line just inside the edge - though if you like that, which you might, then it's fine. I also find that the "dancing ball of water" method is good but then you have to lower the heat a little, in my experience, once it reaches that stage. The water dances even when the pan gets too hot, so you have to stop it at the point when you first see the dancing ball of water.

2. My pancakes were really good, but LACKED SALT and to my taste a bit more sugar would have been better. I tasted the batter and it was really saltless, and the first four i cooked were really tasteless because of the lack of salt, so i sprinkled salt on the batter and mixed a bit and the second four were better by far. I'd at least double the amount of salt, and also a little bit more sugar). But that's my taste. Try it, though, you'll find it doesn;t make them salty but just enhances their pancake flavor.

3. I, personally, found the recipe overly fussy. First of all it used too many containers, all of which have to be washed (maybe the person who wrote the recipe has a bunch of employees who wash the dishes, but this is not a practical home recipe, especially if the person making them is the one who has to wash up after!). It requires

• a measuring cup to measure the buttermilk
• a bowl to beat eggwhite and buttermilk
• a bowl to beat yolk and butter
• a pot to melt butter
• a bowl to mix it all together

i suggest using a large measuring cup, measure the buttermilk, add whites and beat, , add yolks and add butter (not too hot) (it's not like you're beating them up, why can;t they all be together? this is not explained in the recipe.) Then using a big bowl to put the flour "mix" and add the liquid.
alternately, when i realized how many pots and containers i was getting dirty, i ended up pouring the flour into the liquid, and it came fine. That saves you one bowl, anyway.

4. I don;t really see the advantage of having the "mix" - i must say i never saw the advantage of any kind of mix. Is it really hard to measure flour, a couple of tsp salt, powder, soda, sugar? You put the flour in the cup, add a tsp of this and a tsp of that - is that a lot of time wasted? In the end the second part is the real pain, where you mix this and that and the other with soemthing else, then mix those together and mix it with the flour mix - THAT is the part to streamline.

5. though i don;t particularly like fluffy pancakes, these were actually very good. I usually make them using a recipe from an old 1950s betty crocker cookbook (really, after all they had a test kitchen and did some of the real basics in a way that made them foolproof). They;re not as fluffy but the taste is the same. (I;ve tried many different recipes, and i keep coming back to those).

Hi siduri,

The recipe that RPM said he used calls for just that step. I won't address your other points until I look at the recipe and pics again, but I very clearly remember this point being made in the original recipe, a copy of which is in my files.

Yeah, i know, but on his picture you can see the griddle, and it has small puddles of butter - well, not puddles, but visible butter. When you wipe it with a towel, you shouldn;t actually see the butter. That's why the pancakes have that dark ring.

Ahhh - now I understand what you meant.

Personal preference trumps all when cooking at home :chef: