| One of my go-to recipes for party desserts. It makes a fabulous, light, crumbly shortcake which serves as a perfect base for any fruit. I do have a note right next to "bake for 20 minutes, or until golden" where we've written "start checking at 12." Maybe my oven runs hot. |
| This recipe makes high, light pancakes still rich with the flavors of egg and dairy. Plus, I've noticed that most recipes call for less buttermilk than I buy... so either this is a great way to use up the extra buttermilk, or a good reason to make one of those other recipes. |
| This is the recipe from the While Lily flour bag, and it's darn near bulletproof. Why would you bother with anything else? |
| I know 2 or 3 people, plus myself, who've tried this recipe and, as near as we can tell, it's just broken. The dough comes out wet, almost soupy, and makes something like a biscuit-flavored muffin top. It doesn't hold its shape and it spreads out tremendously in the oven, gaining almost no height. It's a pleasant enough bread (especially if you're partial to crumbly biscuits instead of flaky), but it sure ain't no biscuit. At the end of the day, turn to page 138 and make the biscuits according to that beautiful bulletproof White Lily recipe (which is the same as the one on the sack of flour). |
| There is one compliment which I prize higher than any other for my cooking: "as good as my grandma's."
This recipe got me that compliment. And from a Texan who doesn't normally eat upside-down cake because his grandma's spoiled him for all others.
The cake is both airy and chewy, the sugar syrup is rich but not sickly, the fruit holds up. If you've never had a fresh upside-down cake (like me, who'd mostly had it in cafeterias or from supermarkets), it's a revelation.
Warning: step 1 is, essentially, "make caramel." This can become a black and useless mess easily, and there's nothing you can do but throw it out, wipe out the pan, and start over. But that's part of learning, and it's about timing, not anything hard to do - you just have to watch the sugar and move quickly when it looks like time. |
| I am not a fan of whole wheat pancakes. Light, fluffy, regular white-flour pancakes are a special weekend treat, reminding me of my parents' love and the pleasures of youth. Whole wheat pancakes, dense and strangely nutty, are enforced moderation; a reminder of encroaching middle age and the fact that my cholesterol number is higher than my area code.
So now that you know where the bar is, these are actually pretty good for whole wheat pancakes. The flour I used does not have too much bran in it, so while not exactly "light and fluffy", the cakes were not dense. The nuttiness was on a par with whole wheat sandwich bread, which I eat all the time.
This recipe is exactly the same as Alton's regular buttermilk pancake recipe 2 pages earlier, so it seems that the issue is finding a flour I like. I still can't see myself choosing whole-wheat pancakes over white flour pancakes, but given I've still got over a pound of this flour to use, I probably will make these pancakes again. |
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