Alternative Uses for Pancake Mix

Today I could not face my usual scrambled egg breakfast. I require a hot breakfast in the mornings, cereal is an excellent snack at any other time of day, but it is not breakfast food -- too cold and lumpy. I was going to be off doing things for most of the day (OPERA! With an Aunt! What Larks!), and I was uncertain about lunch, so it needed to be a substantial meal that might carry me through to dinner.

So I stared into my refrigerator pondering my choices. I contemplated pancakes but did not feel sufficiently something or other. I contemplated a quesadilla, but that did not sing to me either. I thought about a Dutch baby*, but a true Dutch baby required more eggs than I wanted to commit. I returned to contemplating the buckwheat pancake mix. It still did not appeal as pancakes, but what if used it in place of some of the flour in a Dutch baby, in the hopes that its leavening agents would compensate for the lack of an egg. 


Cap Hill Baby

1/2 c Archer Mills Organic Buckwheat pancake mix
1/2 c all purpose flour
1 c milk
2 eggs
1 Tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp veg. oil
2 Tbsp butter

Combine everything but the oil and butter in a blender. Beat until smooth. Stick in the fridge.
Preheat oven to 350.

In a ten inch cast iron skillet combine the butter and oil. Place the skillet in the oven for 10 -15 minutes.

Remove the skillet from the oven, and carefully (it might spatter) pour in the batter.

Bake for 15 -20 minutes, until puffed and solid. (To my surprise it was done at the fifteen minute mark not the 20. Although if I had let it go longer it might have gotten browner, but I was in a time crunch.)

Serve with your favorite pancake toppings. Today I ate it with canned peaches, in honor of my great grandmother, and yogurt.

This procedure resulted in a dense, chewy cake with good buckwheat and butter flavor. It was not quite what I was expecting, but it was a good hearty brunch on a morning when I walked to the Seattle Center. I could have taken the bus, but I would have had to leave the house at the same time. It was a very nice walk even on a day inclined to serious bluster.

*It's a baked puffy thing that exists in the borderlands between pancakes and soufflés. These are two things that at first glance do not have obvious borders.  Yorkshire puddings occupy similar culinary geography