Boston, Pancakes
I'm in the greater Boston metropolitan area now.
This evening fennel and I made Cheez-It pancakes, because he really like Cheez-Its and I really like harebrained ideas. I guess it's important to state for the record that he likes bad ideas and I like Cheez-Its plenty well enough.
Anyway, we made two attempts, modifying my regular buttermilk pancake recipe. The normal recipe has 1 cup flour, 1/4 tsp salt, and 0 cups Cheez-It meal.
After doing a pH experiement with Cheez-It meal (combined with baking soda & water, it did not fizz) we decided to leave the baking powder/soda ratio alone.
Trial one:
1 cu buttermilk
1/2 cu flour
1/2 cu Cheez-It meal
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 T oil
1 egg
The batter for this smelled quite Cheezity, and had a strong orange tinge to it. It rose and cooked well, but smelled like pancakes while cooking. Shoshana's griddle is fantastic and these turned a beautiful brown, which basically obliterated the orange hue.
The flavor was a little salty of regular pancakes, but had no noticeable Cheez flavor. The texture was like buttermilk pancakes, and they were 100% edible. Under the theory that apples and cheese go together we ate them with sauteed apples, which were also 100% edible. Nom nom nom!
Disappointed with the low Cheez content of Trial 1 we went on to Trial 2, increasing the Cheez/flour ratio. We tripled it.
Trial 2:
1 cu buttermilk
1/4 cu flour
3/4 cu Cheez-It meal
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 T oil
1 egg
These were very orange and of course still smelled like Cheez-It. The texture was grosser looking, since the Cheez-It meal was less finely ground (we used a food processor) made it look a little pukey (I theorize that if you ate the ingredients to the regular recipe your puke would look like pancake batter. But that's an experiment for another day.)
We made a half recipe of this, since we weren't so hungry any more, and if it was a success we'd want to try even more Cheez-It flour.
These didn't bake quite so well - they browned on the outside before the middle really got a chance to cook. I think we could have fixed that by reducing the oil content (the cheez-it meal contains a significant quantity of oil) and maybe increasing the overall quantity of cheez-it meal (which seems less dense than flour). The bright orange color still was replaced with the lovely pancake-brown.
But though I feel we could have fixed the texture, the flavor caused us to abort the experiment. There was still no appreciable Cheez flavor, but now it was really quite salty. I like salt.
I sometimes just eat plain salt. But these were not good. They weren't disgusting, they were just very solidly not good. They weren't cheesy. Since that is the goal, it was clear that we wouldn't get that without adding even more cheez-it meal, which would make it even more salty, which was undesirable. Plus at this point we were both kind of full, so we gave up.
There were three likely outcomes:
I declare this a: Failure
This evening fennel and I made Cheez-It pancakes, because he really like Cheez-Its and I really like harebrained ideas. I guess it's important to state for the record that he likes bad ideas and I like Cheez-Its plenty well enough.
Anyway, we made two attempts, modifying my regular buttermilk pancake recipe. The normal recipe has 1 cup flour, 1/4 tsp salt, and 0 cups Cheez-It meal.
After doing a pH experiement with Cheez-It meal (combined with baking soda & water, it did not fizz) we decided to leave the baking powder/soda ratio alone.
Trial one:
1 cu buttermilk
1/2 cu flour
1/2 cu Cheez-It meal
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 T oil
1 egg
The batter for this smelled quite Cheezity, and had a strong orange tinge to it. It rose and cooked well, but smelled like pancakes while cooking. Shoshana's griddle is fantastic and these turned a beautiful brown, which basically obliterated the orange hue.
The flavor was a little salty of regular pancakes, but had no noticeable Cheez flavor. The texture was like buttermilk pancakes, and they were 100% edible. Under the theory that apples and cheese go together we ate them with sauteed apples, which were also 100% edible. Nom nom nom!
Disappointed with the low Cheez content of Trial 1 we went on to Trial 2, increasing the Cheez/flour ratio. We tripled it.
Trial 2:
1 cu buttermilk
1/4 cu flour
3/4 cu Cheez-It meal
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 T oil
1 egg
These were very orange and of course still smelled like Cheez-It. The texture was grosser looking, since the Cheez-It meal was less finely ground (we used a food processor) made it look a little pukey (I theorize that if you ate the ingredients to the regular recipe your puke would look like pancake batter. But that's an experiment for another day.)
We made a half recipe of this, since we weren't so hungry any more, and if it was a success we'd want to try even more Cheez-It flour.
These didn't bake quite so well - they browned on the outside before the middle really got a chance to cook. I think we could have fixed that by reducing the oil content (the cheez-it meal contains a significant quantity of oil) and maybe increasing the overall quantity of cheez-it meal (which seems less dense than flour). The bright orange color still was replaced with the lovely pancake-brown.
But though I feel we could have fixed the texture, the flavor caused us to abort the experiment. There was still no appreciable Cheez flavor, but now it was really quite salty. I like salt.
I sometimes just eat plain salt. But these were not good. They weren't disgusting, they were just very solidly not good. They weren't cheesy. Since that is the goal, it was clear that we wouldn't get that without adding even more cheez-it meal, which would make it even more salty, which was undesirable. Plus at this point we were both kind of full, so we gave up.
There were three likely outcomes:
- They are alright, if kind of weird.
- They were a whole new kind of disgusting
- They weren't very good.
I declare this a: Failure