Saturday, May 26, 2012

Lemon Poppyseed Pancakes!

So my first post will be on the Lemon Poppy seed Pancakes recipe I found one day while surfing through Pinterest. The recipe can be found here for reference. The original poster has a few photos that were really great to get an idea of what my final product would look like. The recipe was fairly easy to follow which was really nice. In fact, it was pretty much 3 step process: 1) Gather all the correct ingredients into their proper separate bowls (dry and wet), 2) Mix ingredients to the correct consistency, 3) Cook them on my pan with a little butter (or Pam if you prefer) and serve!


Amount/difficulty of ingredients needed: 4/10
Overall difficulty of recipe: 3/10
Prep time: 20-30 minutes (depending on fast you cut strawberries and measure out things)
Cooking time: 15-20 minutes (depending on how your stove cooks)


The ingredients needed were the following:
2 cups unbleached ap (all-purpose) flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1/3 cup poppy seeds
zest of 4 lemons
2 cups buttermilk
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons butter, melted



Out of all of these ingredients, the two I haven't ever really worked with [separately] were the buttermilk and poppy seeds themselves. The buttermilk had a semi-sour smell I was not used to, which is totally normal so don't worry like I did. The poppy seeds I bought I ended up using entirely; one small jar is basically 1/3 of a cup in size (slightly less) which is perfect for this recipe.


The hardest part of this recipe for me to follow was this step: "Stir all the ingredients until they are just combined. Don't worry if the batter is a bit lumpy, you don't want to over mix." This was particularly hard for me because I generally tend to "over mix" being that I'm afraid the ingredients are never integrated enough and the end result will taste weird. I may have ended up over-mixing a little bit, but my batter ended up looking almost exactly like the one in the picture.
The second difficulty I had was when I was cooking. This was because I have an electric stove I'm still getting used to (as oppose to my old gas stove in the previous house). Gauging the temperature on my stove is difficult because I try to turn on it on low, but it doesn't heat up enough. So I turn it up a few notches, and then it gets so hot that the pancake burns before it cooks all the way through. So finding a happy medium may be tricky, however if you already know the tendencies of your stove then this is irrelevant to you.
Once I figured that out for myself [and the pancakes], the process became much faster.
My pancakes didn't end up as fluffy as those on the website, and I'm pretty sure that was my fault. I'm used to trying to spread the pancake batter to make thinner pancakes so that they cook faster and don't burn.
The pancakes were very delicious, however because they ended up being thin they were a little too dry for my taste in pancakes. Some extra butter (and whipped cream) definitely helped with this, although not completely.
I used a spatula to get every last bit of the batter from this bowl to make the pancakes. I think I ended up with about 12 or so pancakes, which is what the recipe said it would make. I believe it would make just as many large pancakes if I hadn't "spread" them out so much on the pan. Hopefully next time I can have much fluffier pancakes.

The end result? Wonderfully delicious with the perfect amount of lemon and poppy seed flavor! And soooo much more delicious with a strawberry and bit of whipped cream in every bite.

 Below is everything I ended up using for my breakfast meal.



Sooooooooo yummy!