It's been a while since I did my last Pinterest challenge, where I follow the PINstructions to see if I can replicate the results as claimed. This past Tuesday was celebrated as Pancake Day here in the UK, and I had the idea to test a pin that I've been drooling over for a long time: bacon pancakes.
There are LOADS of pins out there for bacon pancakes - some call them dippers, but in essence, they all equate to the same thing: savory bacon tucked inside a warm, soft, chewy pancake. Don't believe me? Throw the words "bacon" and "pancake" into the search bar in Pinterest, and tell me I'm crazy. I just had to try it myself! Now, I'm no food photographer, so you're GOING TO excuse my rather crude pics, but here's the basic steps I followed.
STEP 1 - Cook the bacon.
This is an important step, because the pancakes will cook faster than the bacon so to prevent getting ill from raw bacon, or burning your pancakes waiting for it to cook, just do it beforehand. Now, in the UK, "bacon" is a little bit different from the US. Traditional American breakfast bacon is referred to as "streaky bacon" or "bacon rashers" over here, and while it's relatively easy to find, I happened to have some of this larger stuff already on hand.
STEP 2 - Prepare your pancake mix.
I don't have a photo for this step, but that's okay. I used a packaged mix, but you can use your favorite, whatever. THIS IS YOUR GORRAM MEAL!STEP 3 - Start em up!
I did a few single slices of bacon to practice (pics at the end of the post) but decided to make it cutesy for hubby by making some heart-shaped ones for him. I poured the batter into a heart shape in the pan (by hand, eyeballed) and then laid two pieces of bacon into the batter. I then added more batter on top of the bacon to seal them in.
STEP 4 - Flip it!
This was relatively easy to accomplish, but be careful of the wetter batter that will be on top of the bacon and probably won't have had a chance to gel up.
STEP 5 - Serve as desired
Traditionally the Brits serve pancakes with lemon juice and caster sugar (that's basically powdered sugar, for my 'Murkins), but I'm a Texas girl, and we do em with a pat of butter and maple syrup. I was lucky enough to find some imported Canadian maple syrup at the grocery store, which made me do a jiggly dance in the aisles and earned me a few suspicious looks. THEY DON'T KNOW MY PAIN!As promised, here are a couple pics of the single-rasher "dippers" I made as I was testing the validity of this delicious pancake magic. Arguably these were the tastiest of all of them, because they were cooked in the leftover bacon grease
CONCLUSION:
Delicious. Bacon and pancakes were always meant to mingle, which is why so many of us eat them together. What Dot has joined together, let no man put asunder.If you like seeing my kitchen experiments, or have suggestions for the next Following PINstructions post, leave them down in the comments. Have a great weekend, and I'll see ya tomorrow!