Guest Blogger: Andrew!

Hello Hello Hello!

I’m Andrew Stratford from A Day In The Life, and I’m SO glad Allison invited me to be a guest blogger on An Apple A Day Handmades. Allison is one of my greatest friends, and so you should all continue to read her blog, post high-praising comments, and send her black and white photos of women (**Did that last one sound completely random? See some of her earlier posts!**)

And now. The food.

For my recipe I chose the beautifully simple, yet incredibly complicated recipe of Pancakes. That’s right. Pancakes.

If any of you know me (which I realize that just about none of you do) you know that I have....other talents....than cooking in the kitchen. But look. I’m in college. I do what I can. I’m no Chef Boyardee, but I know how to get by. And let me tell you now that nothing tastes better on a Sunday afternoon than a quick batch of the Stratford family's extra-thin Pancakes. Now, before I lose all of my readers who are saying to themselves with sickening sarcasm, “Oh boy. Pancakes. I’ve never made THOSE before,” let me just say that these pancakes go above and beyond the standard recipes you’ve all tried. Well, at least the ones I’ve tried. And let me say now, I have eaten a LOT of pancakes in my days.

Now, I’m not going to pretend like this recipe is very complicated. In fact, I’ll admit that it’s pretty much just the recipe on the back of any box of Bisquick:

2 cups Original Bisquick mix [Yes, it MUST be Bisquick]

1 cup milk

2 eggs

STIR ingredients until blended.

POUR slightly less than 1/4 cupfuls onto hot greased griddle. [Yes, it MUST be 1/4 cupfuls] [Just kidding]

COOK until edges are dry. Turn; cook until golden.

[Duh!]

But as a family we’ve adopted three secret ingredients that make the pancakes utterly divine. Tell only close friends and family. (And maybe not even family.)

The first:

Add twice as much milk to the recipe. That’s right. Double it. What does this do? It makes the pancakes extra, extra, extra thin, which makes them a lot better to eat for some reason. I don’t know how to say it, really. It’s just a lot more enjoyable when you get to eat twenty ultra-thin pancakes instead of two super-huge ones.

The second (and this one’s actually optional):

When you are greasing the griddle, use Nucoa margarine instead of a spray-can like Pam. The Nucoa will add a light buttery flavor to your pancakes that most people who try these pancakes tend to enjoy, and because it’s Nucoa it won’t burn while you are cooking with it.

And the third - and the most important one of all:

Add four dollops of sour cream to the batter before you mix it all together. No joke. I personally would never even dream of putting sour cream and pancakes together in the same sentence, let alone in the same recipe. But you absolutely have to try this because for some reason it makes the pancakes taste like manna from heaven (baruch hashem!). You really can add as much of it as you want (or dare), but when I made my most recent batch of pancakes I used four big fork-fulls of the stuff and just blended it all together before I cooked the pancakes.

AMAZING.

"But what can you DO with such good pancakes as these???"

You can eat them with syrup!

You can eat them with orange juice! (Though not like you can with syrup.)

You can eat them plain!

You can eat them in a box!

You can eat them with a fox!

You can eat them here or there!

You can eat them anywhere!

Enlarged to show texture.

I sincerely hope you enjoy the pancakes as much as my family does. They are super simple, and yet super amazing.

And remember: if you ever find yourself wanting to read a blog that is totally well-written, full of great pictures, has the wittiest of humor, and whose author is utterly amazing, just read from An Apple a Day Handmades!

Otherwise, come visit me at A Day In The Life!

Sincerely yours,

Andrew