Pear Pancakes. an excuse to write something

I have been struggling in the midst of a home renovation and finding my place in the working world to find a recipe to share with you.  The honeymoon phase as the lunch room monitor is long since over and I am realizing what a mistake this was.  I took the job because I wanted to have an impact on how children eat, to try to make a more positive environment.  However I have learned that one adult with good intentions, in a room with 80 + children, can only do so much.  When one table gets too loud the children at the next table have to get louder so they can hear each other.  Soon the lunchroom is filled with yelling children and you have no idea where it got started.

I was convinced to apply for this job by friends who know about my passion for feeding children.  So instead of continuing to stand in a roomful of children desperately trying to keep things calm, I am going to work on feeding them.  Next week I will say good-bye to being a lunch room monitor and join Burlington Food Service at the High School.  There will be some minimal food prep to start and I know they are always looking for better ways to feed the students.  The head of food service here calls me, "Chocolate Milk" because I first met him at a meeting where I tried to convince him to take it off the menu.  We may disagree about chocolate milk, but we both believe in feeding kids.

Amid all this we are also having work done on our house.  I will save the details of that for another post.  So I have been struggling to find a creative enough recipe to share here, I also have been aware of explaining to the guys working on the house why I am outside leaning over a plate of food with my camera.  I have shared my pancake recipe here before, but I love the flavor of pear pancakes enough to give them their own post.  Plus, for new readers, this really is a great pancake recipe.  The pears become soft and tender in the batter, with the heat bringing out their sweetness.  I like them best with a little cinnamon added to the batter, topped with melted butter and pure Maple Syrup.  I have given the recipe as both the original size and 1 1/2 times the recipe, which is enough to feed the whole family when everyone is hungry and tastes better because of the increase in eggs

Pancake Ingredients (original batch size)

1/2 cup unbleached all purpose flour

1/2 cup white whole wheat or whole wheat pastry flour

2 Tbsp sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 - 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

1 cup milk (you can use regular milk or buttermilk, the baking soda makes the recipe flexible)

1 large egg

2 Tbsp butter melted and slightly cooled

1 to 2 pears, sliced in quarters, core removed, and then thinly sliced.  Peers with thick skins should be peeled first.

Pancake Ingredients (one and a half batches: enough to satisfy all 4 people in my family)

3/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour

3/4 cups white whole wheat or whole wheat pastry flour

3 Tbsp sugar

3 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1/4 to 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

3/8 tsp baking soda (I often just use 1/2 tsp baking soda here)

1 1/2 cup milk (you can use regular milk or buttermilk, the baking soda makes the recipe flexible)

2 large eggs

3 Tbsp butter melted and slightly cooled

2 pears, sliced in quarters, core removed, and then thinly sliced.  Peers with thick skins should be peeled first.

Sift the dry ingredients together. Measure the milk and add the egg/eggs to the milk and whisk to combine and beat the egg/eggs (I use a large glass measuring cup and then whisk the 2 together by spinning the whisk between my hands. Both my boys can imitate this move perfectly with their toy whisk). Add the wet to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined, a few lumps are fine, overmixing is not. Add the butter while still mixing in the wet ingredients.

Use a small ladle or measuring cup to pour pancake batter onto a preheated hot griddle that has a light film of butter on it (I set my electric griddle to 350°).  Press slices of pears into the pancakes as they cook. Flip the pancakes when they appear to be dry around the edges and holes appear across the surface of the pancakes. If you are unsure if they are done lift a corner of a pancake with your spatula to check the color. Cook the second side until light brown and either keep warm in a 200° oven or serve immediately with butter and real maple syrup. 

Pancakes

Pancakes are a standard breakfast around here. At this point I have changed the original recipe so much that the one we use is completely my own. We make them enough that both Lewis and I have the recipe memorized. This means it is much faster to prepare a batch as there is no referring back to a recipe to slow you down. Because of this these even get served on crazy school mornings. It also means I can tell you what happens when almost all of the ingredients get left out, cooking before having coffee is always a dangerous activity if you were hoping for consistency.

My boys love this recipe and at this same time they often take them for granted. If they appear too frequently they have been known to whine and ask why we can't have popovers, crepes or something else equally time consuming. I wonder if the two of them will ever realize just how spoiled they are at the table?

On the way back from vacation in Cape Cod we stayed with my brother and his family. Before going away I made up a triple batch of the dry ingredients for pancakes so we could make breakfast for both families. My brothers says his two daughters are both horribly picky eaters, vegetarians who pick the tofu out of things and discard it. When we made these pancakes for breakfast my brother had to insist that his oldest daughter, Vina, try one. She grudgingly took one bite and then happily devoured three pancakes.

While she was eating them Vina declared our pancakes "better then daddies", daddies pancakes had already been declared "better then mommies". About a minute later she asked if she had hurt daddies feelings. The answer was no, he was just ecstatic to have something she wanted to eat. When everyone was done with breakfast he quickly followed our instructions for freezing the pancakes to have another day. I don't think I have ever seen him listen to something I have to say quite so closely.

We had a lot of fun at my brothers house, even with my nieces telling Sebastian and Julian that they don't like playing with boys. Most of Julian's best friends are girls and Sebastian has several girls he play with as well, they were both mystified. There was also a small problem with our food joking clashing with the girls fear of meat. Years ago we went through the drive through at the bank and my children were both given teal blue lollipops. Both boys asked what flavor they were. Honestly what food in nature is teal blue? So I told them they were liver flavor. Ever since then teal blue lollipops are liver flavor, sometimes my boys even request liver flavor now. Well at one point all four cousins were sitting around the table and Sebastian told them the lollipops we had for the car ride were liver flavored. As an exacting vegetarian Vina freaked and ran from the table. We convinced her it was not liver, and order was restored. Its a good thing we did not try to serve liver flavored pancakes.

When making pancakes for my family it takes one and a half of the original recipe to satisfy everyones hunger. For 1 and a half times the original recipe we add another whole egg rather then try to divide an egg. I feel the recipe is better with the slightly higher amount of egg that this results in. I have listed the recipe 2 ways below, the original quantities and one and a half times the recipe, this way if you want a larger batch you won't need to do math before having coffee.

Pancake Ingredients (original batch size)

1/2 cup unbleached all purpose flour

1/2 cup white whole wheat or whole wheat pastry flour

2 Tbsp sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

1 cup milk (you can use regular milk or buttermilk, the baking soda makes the recipe flexible)

1 large egg

2 Tbsp butter melted and slightly cooled

Pancake Ingredients (one and a half batches: enough to satisfy all 4 people in my family)

3/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour

3/4 cups white whole wheat or whole wheat pastry flour

3 Tbsp sugar

3 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

3/8 tsp baking soda (I often just use 1/2 tsp baking soda here)

1 1/2 cup milk (you can use regular milk or buttermilk, the baking soda makes the recipe flexible)

2 large eggs

3 Tbsp butter melted and slightly cooled

Sift the dry ingredients together. Measure the milk and add the egg/eggs to the milk and whisk to combine and beat the egg/eggs (I use a large glass measuring cup and then whisk the 2 together by spinning the whisk between my hands. Both my boys can imitate this move perfectly with their toy whisk). Add the wet to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined, a few lumps are fine, overmixing is not. Add the butter while still mixing in the wet ingredients.

Use a small ladle or measuring cup to pour pancake batter onto a preheated hot griddle that has a light film of butter on it (I set my electric griddle to 350°). If adding fruit evenly press it in to the batter on the griddle, if using frozen blueberries you do no need to defrost them first. Flip the pancakes when they appear to be dry around the edges and holes appear across the surface of the pancakes. If you are unsure if they are done lift a corner of a pancake with your spatula to check the color. Cook the second side until light brown and either keep warm in a 200° oven or serve immediately with butter and real maple syrup. Sometimes I serve them with a fruit sauce like apple or plum.