Pancake

Recent Recipes

• 1

  Swedish Pancakes with Homemade Raspberry Jam (“Pannkakor”)

  Swedish pancakes are one of those things that feel extra special but are surprisingly easy to make. They’re thin, buttery, and just the right amount of sweet—kind of like a crêpe but softer and more delicate. They’re often served with raspberry or strawberry jam and whipped cream, but honestly, you can top them with whatever you like—fresh berries, a sprinkle of sugar, or even a little drizzle of maple syrup or a squeeze of lemon juice.

  • Make the jam up to a week in advance and store it in a sealable container in the fridge. Alternatively, buy pre-made jam of choice.
  • Although you should make the pancakes right before serving, you can make the pancake batter up to two days in advance and store it in the fridge until ready to use.
• 2

  Curry Leaf Rava Dosa

  "Rava or semolina dosas are nature's instant dosas, requiring no fermentation and making a stiff, crispy, lacy pancake. These ones are made with crushed-up fried curry leaves, which add fragrance to the dish. It's delicious to eat with tempered tiny dried shrimp or kunisso, but would also be lovely with lamb curry, sambar, or black sesame sambol." —Cynthia Shanmugalingam

• 3

  Buttermilk Cachapas (Venezuelan Corn Pancakes)

  My first taste of a cachapa was after a night out in Washington Heights, Manhattan. On a block full of Dominican restaurants, whose cuisine I’m very familiar with, I saw a lone Venezuelan restaurant that piqued my interest. Upon entering, I was greeted with images of what looked like large arepas folded over and stuffed with shredded beef, tender pork shoulder, chicken—the options were endless. I ordered one with shredded beef, lettuce, tomato, and a little bit of garlic mayo, and from that moment, there was no turning back. The sweet cachapa, reminiscent of Northern-style cornbread (sweet and cakey versus its more crumbly, less sweet Southern counterpart), and contrasted by the savory fillings, instantly made me a lifelong fan. Here, I played up that cornbread connection by adding buttermilk to the batter for extra tang. The cheese filling is traditional, meat is optional.
  
  Upon further research, my comparison to an arepa, especially the sweeter arepas de choclo found throughout Colombia, wasn’t too far off. While Venezuelans and Colombians have a friendly rivalry over who invented the incredibly delicious arepa, the cachapa's relation to them is undeniable. Typically made with fresh corn in Venezuela, canned corn is just as delicious. Remember to get your hands on "masarepa" flour, which is a precooked cornmeal made especially for dishes like arepas and cachapas. P.A.N. is a popular brand. Be careful not to get "masa harina," which is nixtamalized corn used to make tortillas and is popular in Mexican and Central American kitchens. (Sorry, regular cornmeal or polenta will not work in this recipe!) If cachapas are new to you, I promise they will find their way into your rotation more often than you think.

• 4

  Heavenly Hots

  Sometimes the name of a dish is irresistible: Ratatouille. Financiers. Mooncakes. Oysters Rockefeller. Fallen soufflé. Anything confited. And my recent favorite, pudding chômeur (biscuit dough baked in maple syrup and cream—a delight that Canadians have been keeping to themselves), which translates to "unemployed-person pudding." When I began work on this book and several readers wrote in about heavenly hots, there was no question—I had to try a recipe with that name. Although heavenly hots sound like a late-night cable offering, they're nothing more salacious than pancakes. Once you make them, you'll understand the name: they are so feathery, creamy, and tangy—so heavenly that you find yourself unable to let them cool at all before devouring them. Heavenly hots clarify what's wrong with other pancakes-namely, that most of them are god-awful: doughy, heavy thuds in our bellies. You always think they're a great idea until about ten minutes after you've eaten them. What makes the hots so heavenly is that they ignore all the classic ratios of flour to sugar to eggs (sorry, Michael Ruhlman!). They're made with low-gluten cake flour and just enough of it to lash the batter of sour cream, sugar, and salt into fragile cakes. The only problem with heavenly hots is that your first batch is likely to be a wash. The batter is very loose and it produces pancakes-some might call them blini-that are about as sturdy as wet tissue paper. You need to take deep breaths when it's time for flipping, and you need to let the hots know you're the boss. Timid jabs with a spatula will not end well. Heavenly hots were popularized at the Bridge Creek Restaurant in Berkeley, but the original recipe came from Bob Burnham, a chef who once worked for John Hudspeth, later the owner of Bridge Creek. Burnham served a sugarless version like blini, with caviar. At Bridge Creek, they were breakfast, served in stacks and doused with maple syrup—"real maple syrup," Hudspeth said, "which was unusual in Berkeley at the time." They're the kind of recipe that makes an impression. Hudspeth named his company Heavenly Hots, Inc., and Marion Cunningham, the author of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and a friend of Hudspeth, included the hots in The Breakfast Book. —Recipe adapted from Marion Cunningham and The Bridge Creek Restaurant in Berkeley, California. Excerpted from "The Essential New York Times Cookbook."