Pecan Pancakes with Caramel Bacon Sauce

I have met the culinary cookbook love of my life.

I feel badly though. I used to think it was my book, "The Great Big Butter Cookbook." But after wandering around in a Borders Store dragged in there against my will by myself and nobody else, I found it. The book. The book of all books.

SEDUCED BY BACON.


Seriously. How could anyone resist this book?

The first recipe I tried was Pecan Pancakes with...wait for it.....Caramel Bacon Sauce.

OMG.

This is just divine. No other word for it. I mean the pancakes are really  good, and had I made it exactly like the recipe called for they would have been awesome. But this Caramel Bacon sauce goes beyond words for me. Just try it. You'll thank me for it.

Pecan Pancakes with Caramel Bacon Sauce
Adapted from "Seduced by Bacon" by Joanna Pruess with Bob Lape

For the Caramel Bacon Sauce
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp light corn syrup
1 cup heavy cream
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
 1 tbsp dark rum or bourbon (optional- yes, you better believe I went for it)
 6 slices thick sliced bacon, cooked until crisp and finely crumbled

For the Pancakes/Waffles
2 cups sifted flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
5 tbsp melted butter
1 cup chopped pecans, lightly toasted

Make the Caramel Bacon Sauce 
Combine sugar, water and corn syrup in medium sized heavy pan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until sugar is dissolved. Bring mixture to a boil and cook undisturbed until sugar begins to turn golden. Continue cooking until sauce becomes a rich amber color and immediately remove from heat.

Carefully stir in cream as it will bubble up.(Mine actually seized into a giant clump but dissolved once on the heat again). Return to heat and bring sauce to boil before removing from heat. Stir with spoon until smooth. Stir in butter, vanilla and rum or bourbon. Add bacon and serve warm. Sauce will keep in fridge for a few weeks and makes about 1 1/4 cups sauce.


Make Pancakes
In large bowl, sift flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and cinnamon. In separate bowl, beat eggs, milk and butter until smooth. Stir in pecans. Combine dry and wet ingredients and cook. Serve pancakes with warm Caramel Bacon Sauce.

SMS: Sweet Potato Bread (and more) with Cinnamon Rum Orange Glaze

Part I: The Challenge

 Part II: The Yummy Experiment

 This weeks recipe for the Sweet Melissa Bakers was Sweet Potato Bread (with a to die for Cinnamon Rum Orange Glaze)  chosen by Lorelai over at Mermaid Sweets - please check our her blog too as she will be posting the recipe there and you won't want to miss it. This was a great recipe...that I almost didn't make because I wasn't in a bread state of mind. In fact, I had decided to turn it into a pancake recipe but I had so much left over afterwards  I still ended up making 3 mini loaves with it in the end...one of which my sister ate, another that she took home to my mom and one that is sitting in my refrigerator taunting me to eat it as I type.

 But I digress. The only thing that I found a little offputting about the recipe was actually making the glaze...I had a hard time for some reason gauging if it was sufficiently reduced and I had been expecting a slightly thicker almost syrupy consistency that it never achieved (most likely because it wasn't meant to). I did end up using walnuts instead of pecans in the recipe as I had a lot of them in the house and now that I think about it, tossing some chocolate chips in there would have been really yummy too. Next time for sure.

For the pancakes, I took a quarter of the dough, added milk to it until it reached a smoother thinner consistency and they turned out very well for breakfast with the orange glaze spread on top and just a hint of maple syrup drizzled over it. I found it a tiny bit hard to tell when they were done because of the color of the dough so I had to guess (and burn) one  in the process but after that, it got a little easier and tastier.

Please check out the other Sweet Melissa Sunday Bakers blogs for their experiences with this weeks recipe!

Skillet Puff Pancake

I may at last have found a pancake recipe that is foolproof for those mornings when I'm tired and prone to grabbing baking soda instead of baking powder.

To top it off, it's yummy.

I have a friend who always orders these when we  go out to breakfast but I was never tempted to try it until today.

In my case, laziness is the mother of invention. One bowl, one pan, leave it alone and it's ready to serve. Just my style for pancakes. The original recipe did call for 2 oz/4 tbsp but like I said, mornings are not my thing so I read it as 2 tbsp butter. Still very good and it was very cool to pull it out of the oven all puffy and browned.

Skillet Puff Pancake
Adapted from Fine Cooking's Sweet Cakes: Holiday Baking Issue 

2 large eggs
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole milk
dash salt
dash of cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice
2 tbsp butter

Place oven proof skillet in oven and heat to 450 degrees. Once oven has heated, place butter in skillet and allow it to melt. Meanwhile, mix eggs, flour, milk, salt and spices in bowl and mix well. Pour batter into skillet and bake in oven for 12-15 minutes. Drizzle with syrup and serve immediately.

Blueberry Ricotta Pancakes

It looks like my new Sunday tradition is going to be Ricotta Pancakes. I'd gone to brunch a month or so back drooling because I knew in advance I was going to order the Ricotta Pancakes. I'd never tried it before but the description in my mind promised a plate of delight.

Eh, not so much. Very dense, chewy, rather bland pancakes. I felt rather cheated afterwards.

So on a whim last week I googled Ricotta Pancakes and came across this gem from A Feast for the Eyes that turned out amazing. Last week, I made them with chocolate chips. This week with fresh blueberries. Both, equally delicious. This week, I took the left over dough and made blueberry ricotta muffins...I'll post later how they taste.

Now my pancakes are not pretty but that's more to do with my spatula skills than the recipe.

Ricotta Pancakes
Adapted from a Recipe at "A Feast for The Eyes"
Original Recipe: Bobby Flay

Ingredients
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup ricotta cheese
2 eggs
2/3 cup buttermilk
bluberries
generous dash lemon zest
Butter, for griddle

Directions Preheat a nonstick griddle.
Combine flour, baking powder, nutmeg, salt, and sugar in a small bowl.
Whisk together the cheese, eggs, milk, lemon juice and zest in a large bowl.

Whisk the flour mixture into the wet ingredients until just combined.
Brush the hot griddle with butter.
For each pancake, pour approximately 1/4 cup measure of the batter on the griddle and cook on both sides until light golden brown. Repeat until no batter remains.