Buttermilk Pancakes

When I first visited Canada I was introduced to the American Pancake, these pancakes were quite different to the pancakes I was used to. In The Netherlands we bake pancakes that are bigger in diameter but thinner in thickness, they are however slightly thicker that the french crêpe. Our batter is more liquid that the batter for American Pancakes and the pancakes need less cooking time. We eat our pancakes au naturel or with eiter apple, bacon, cheese or a combination of these ingredients baked into the batter, we then top that with either butter and confectioner's sugar or stroop (molasses). You can find a great recipe for Appel Pannenkoek (a.k.a. Dutch Apple Pancakes with Caramelized Sugar) at Almost Bourdain.

Picture of the Appel Pannenkoek by Ellie of Almost Bourdain.

Now, 13 years later, I have finally made my own pancakes from scratch for the first time. And I must say it was much easier than I thought it would be! I used this recipe from Cooking Light for Buttermilk Pancakes. These were sooo good: I've actually been eating them every workday this week. This recipe makes 9 pancakes, I wrapped up two pancakes in a Ziploc-bag, with a small sheet of parchmentpaper between the pancakes and popped the Ziploc bags into the freezer. I then proceeded by removing one bag from the freezer every evening and warmed up the pancakes in the morning: what a great way to start the day!

The recipe tells you to measure out 1/4 cup of batter for one pancake. However when making these I accidentally used my 1/3 cup to measure out the pancakes, somehow I still ended up with 9 pancakes....

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (about 6 3/4 ounces)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups fat-free buttermilk
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 large egg, lightly beaten

Preparation
Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a bowl; stir with a whisk. Combine buttermilk, butter, and egg; add to flour mixture, stirring until smooth.

Pour about 1/4 cup batter per pancake onto a hot nonstick griddle or nonstick skillet. Cook 2 minutes or until tops are covered with bubbles and edges look cooked. Carefully turn pancakes over; cook 2 minutes or until bottoms are lightly browned.

A Hot Pink Butterfly Cake instead of TWD's Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes

You probably came here today expecting to find the Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes that were picked by Kristin of I'm Right about Everyhing for Tuesday with Dorie. Sorry, I didn't make them... As some of you know I accidentally lost about 17 pounds since Christmas and in an attempt to keep them off of me I'm limiting myself to one treat per week. Please go here to see how the mini bundt cakes turned out for the TWD-ers who made them. The recipe can be found over at Kristin's blog.

So now on to this weeks treat... It was something my mom and I had been looking forward to since the beginning of November 2009: we had planned to take a Christmas-themed cake decorating workshop at Sweet Things in Utrecht on the 23rd of December 2009. However unfortunately we had a huge snowstorm that day and the workshop was cancelled due to the weather. We were so dissappointed!!

Soon we rescheduled the workshop for the 1st of February 2010. When I woke up that morning I was so excited, but that excitement soon grew to worry when I got in the car and heared the weather report for that day: snow, snow and more snow.... I instantly thought my mom and I were jinxed: this could not be happening: the workshop could not be cancelled twice due to snow!! We hardly ever get snow here in The Netherlands: maybe two or three times per winter, now it seems that it has been snowing everyday since Christmas!!!I contacted Sweet Things as soon as I arrived at work and was very happy to hear that the workshop was still on!

I drove to Utrecht from work in Arnhem and picked up my mom from the trainstation. When we arrived we got to sample a cute cupcake and some coffee or tea as we waited for the other 4 people that would attend the workshop to arrive. Soon the workshop started: the cakelayers and buttercream had already been prepared in advance, so we got to pick a buttercreamflavor (strawberry, chocolate or caramel; both my mom and I picked caramel). We layered together two cakelayers and the buttercream of our choice, then the cake was put in the freezer.

Time to colour the marzipan: I wanted to have a bright, hot pink layer of marzipan to cover my cake with, so I got some gel and kneaded it through the marzipan.

Isn't it that a gorgeous pink colour???



Then we took our cakes out of the freezer and took some regular buttercream to crumbcoat the cake, here's my mom hard at work!



My cake after crumbcoating it. Then the cakes went back into the freezer and we got to pick colours and figures to put on our cakes.



I went with a butterfly-theme, and picked a lighter pink, a burgundy purple, black and white to cut the butterflies out of.

The next step was to roll out our marzipan, put it over the cake, make sure it covered all sides nicely without any air under it and cut the marzipan to size. The roling out part was fun: instead of using flour like I normally do when rolling out a dough, we had to use confectioner's sugar to keep the marzipan from sticking to the counter.

On to the decorating: to remove the white smudges of confectioner's sugar on both the cake and the decorations we used a slightly damp brush and brushed over the cake, then placed the decorations where we wanted them and brushed them with that same brush.
This purple cake is my mom's.

And here's mine: pretty pink, covered with butterflies!

All six of us made very different, but beautiful cakes!
My mom and I had a blast, time flew by and before we knew it it was time to wrap up our cakes and go home. I can't wait to go back to work Thursday and let my colleagues taste this cake!

Mom and I are already planning our second workshop with Sweet Things.
Up next? The Two-Tier workshop!!

TWD: Cocoa-Nana Bread

"Cake. Mmmmm. I want one more piece. Just. One. More. Fucking. Piece."
This is a quote from Sleep Talkin' Man, a blog about an English man that talks in his sleep and says really odd stuff. I recently stumbled on this blog and it's hilarious, it sure makes me smile :) Anyways, this quote expresses exactly what I though of this weeks challenge for Tuesdays with Dorie.

Steph of Obsessed with Baking picked the Cocoa-Nana Bread for us to bake this week. I love Steph's blog and wasn't very surprised to find out that she picked this recipe simply because I have seen loads of different Banana Bread recipes pop up on her blog, like this one, one with blueberries (that's light too!), one by Cook's Illustrated, one from the Silver Palate Cookbook and most recently the Chocolate Chip Banana Bread. In fact I think Steph should change the name of here blog to Obsessed with Baking Banana Bread!!!

This Cocoa-Nana Bread is amazing, my sucky pictures don't do it any justice!!! I only had a tiny bit: about 1/4 of a slice, simply because my colleagues loved this so much that they devoured it in absolutely no time! In fact when my mom told that she wanted to bake something last Saturday I persuaded her to bake this bread, so I could have another slice! Some people in the P&Q-section where concerned about the banana's. In my opinion the taste of the bananas was more of an afterthought: but I liked how moist they made the bread. This is another keeper: I will be making it again soon, if not tomorrow! So thanks Steph, for picking this scrumptious Cocoa-Nana Bread!!

The recipe can be found at Steph's blog, go here to find out what the other TWD-ers thought of this recipe. Here are the TWD-recipes for February, it's gonna be a great month:

• February 2, 2010: Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes, pages 188 and 189.
• February 9, 2010: Rick Katz’s Brownies for Julia, page 91.
• February 16, 2010: My Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, page 68.
• February 23, 2010: Honey-Wheat Cookies, page 81.