Failure of Flapjacks

Back in August, I told you fine humans about a pancake contest I had entered. Austin’s beloved Kerbey Lane Café challenged area bloggers to create an original recipe using the restaurant’s own pancake mix.

As a fan of pancakes, and an even bigger fan of Kerbey, I was totally up for this challenge. I spent weeks brainstorming and attempting various concoctions before finally settling on three recipes to submit. Last week, the contest participants were emailed the results, and it turns out…

(Drumroll please)

I didn’t win. Womp womp.

But you know what? NOT WOMP WOMP. Yes, I entered a pancake contest and lost. Yes, I’m apparently a failure at flapjacks. But I had a lot of fun creating different things, and I got to eat a lot of yummy creations along the way. In this particular case, failure tastes pretty flippin’ good.

Get it? Flippin’, like in flipping pancakes? No, DON’T YOU DARE close out of this post! You have to give me this terrible joke. It’ll be worth it in the end.

I thought my fellow food lovers might enjoy taking a stab at one of my recipes and experiencing the pancakey joy for yourselves. It was tough to decide which one to share, but the one I’m ultimately going with is the only one that contains cheese, and this blog is pretty devoted to dairy, if you haven’t already figured that out, but even if you’re new here, you probably noticed that this blog has cheese in the name, albeit in a different language, but it’s food-related foreign language, so I don’t think that even counts, and I’m starting to run out of things to say, but this is a spectacularly long run-on sentence and I kinda want to keep rambling just to see how long I can keep it going, but by now you’ve probably skipped over this giant paragraph in order to get to the good stuff, and I have to understand, because I also have a short attention span when it comes to food, so for your sake and mine, I’ll stop, but for the record, if you’ve made it to the end of this disaster, that is really quite impressive, and you totally deserve to make pancakes for yourself now.

Whew.

Here is the Kerbey Cristo Sandwich (named for its similarity to the Monte Cristo Sandwich). Take a look at this baby.

Stop it! Stop licking your computer screen! You’ll frighten the children.

This recipe calls for Kerbey’s pancake mix, but you can definitely substitute any other brand of mix. I mean, probably. I haven’t actually tried it, so the measurements might be slightly off, but it’s not like the pancakes will explode or anything. Maybe. I don’t know for sure.

Liability release: if your food or kitchen appliances explode from using the wrong kind of pancake mix, you can’t sue me, or Kerbey Lane, or WordPress. You can still sue the internet though.

If you give this recipe a try, please let me know what you think!! If enough of you like it, maybe we can assemble an army of righteous pancake fans, and show up at the contest  judges’ houses with fire and pitchforks. Or we could all just sit down and eat some pancakes together. Either way’s fine.

Kerbey Cristo Pancakes

 1 cup Kerbey Lane Café Buttermilk Pancake Mix
¾ cup milk
1 egg
½ teaspoon salt
2 slices of Hormel Applewood Smoked ham
2-4 slices of cheese (American, Cheddar, and Gruyere all work great)
1 tablespoon butter

Whisk the first four ingredients away to a romantic night in Cancun. Kidding. Just whisk them in a small bowl until batter is free of lumps. Lightly grease a large pan or griddle with nonstick spray and place over medium-high heat. When the pan is hot, measure ¼ cup of batter for each pancake and pour it on the pan. There should be enough batter for 4 pancakes.

Cook pancakes until the tops look dry and a few of the bubbles pop. Flip the pancakes over and cook for another couple of minutes until both sides have obtained that perfect summer tan. Transfer pancakes onto a plate, but do not turn off heat.

Slather butter on the pancakes and place one cake butter-side down on the hot pan. Lay on a slice of your favorite cheese and then slap on some ham, because darn it, you’re a nice person and nice people deserve ham! If you’re feeling daring, throw on another slice of fermented dairy product and top with a second pancake, butter-side up.

Grill until bottom pancake is crisp and browned. Flip sandwich over and continue grilling until cheese is melted and attractively gooey. (Pancakes will not have the same “grilled” appearance to them that traditional grilled cheese sandwiches have, but they’ll be beautiful in their own way.) Repeat steps to make the second sandwich.

Transport sandwiches to a plate and attack them down the middle with a knife. Pause for a moment to admire the cheese as it oozes out. Chow down on your cheesy, hammy sammich. Share it with someone else, if you’re feeling particularly generous.

 

 

 

The Angel of Pancakes

 

Months ago, I did a queso review of Kerbey Lane Café in Austin, Texas. Kerbey is a bit of an institution in this area –  nowhere else can you eat queso-covered eggs, follow them with a fried-chicken-and-pancake combo, and then wash it all down with a $2 mimosa. For the lazy and hungover hermits of the world who can’t be bothered to put on pants and go out for their food, Kerbey even sells their very own pancake mix in local grocery stores.

To my eccentric glee, the restaurant recently challenged Austin-area bloggers to create an original recipe using the beloved Kerbey pancake mix. The recipe could be savory or sweet, pancake or non-pancake, as long as it contained any flavor of their mixes.

As you can probably guess, I’ve been a pancake-making monster over the past few weeks. Well, let’s face it. Someone who spends a lot of time making piles of pancakes is no monster. I’m a pancake-making SAINT.

A breakfast food humanitarian.

I’ve come up with different concoctions by flinging random ingredients into the batter and taste-testing it until it seemed remotely edible. Then, I’ve carefully poured the batter onto a hot skillet, or shoved it into a hot oven, and left it there until it successfully bloomed into something else. I’ve even taken careful notes of the way the results looked and tasted and smelled, so that I could more efficiently alter the recipes for improvement.

Forget sainthood, I was like a pancake-making mad scientist.

Take a look at the chemical combinations I created in the lab over the course of a month:

I attempted to de-sweetify the pancakes by adding savory ingredients…

I created a s’more-like dessert using a blondie, marshmallow, and chocolate icing (and instantly developed diabetes after one bite)…

Then, I made a peanut butter bar topped with, once again, chocolate icing. Simply looking at this one will give you 8.5 cavities…

Taking a break from the sweets, I made some cheesy, garlicky biscuits that had the look and texture of cheesy, garlicky dryer lint…

As Monica Geller’s mom would say – It did not taste good.

All in all, I probably made around 10 different creations before finally hitting the FLAPJACK JACKPOT. Say that five times fast.

I’ve submitted the recipes and photos for these three beauties:

Caramel-pecan pancakes topped with…well…chocolate icing again. Stick with what you know, ya know?

Grilled ham-and-cheese pancake-for-bread sandwich, which has a terrible name, but tastes similar to a Monte Cristo sandwich. A beautiful marriage of sweet and savory.

Peanut Butter Bars, now sans chocolate icing…

The winner will receive a $250 gift card to Kerbey Lane Café. I tried to tell myself that I was doing this contest for the simple fun of it, and to not get my hopes up, but then my queso-and-mimosa-loving little heart collided with my irrational competitive streak, and now I really want to win.

Cross your fingers for me! And also maybe your legs. You know what? Just go ahead and cross all of your body parts for me, including your eyes and lungs and toe nails. I need all the luck I can get!

Have you ever participated in a cooking contest before? How did it go? If you were doing this pancake contest, what kinds of recipes and combinations would you have tried?