Father's Day Pancakes (aka Mancakes)

Anyone who knows me will know the following two things about me.  First, I celebrated my first ever father's day as a proud father this year.  And second, I absolutely love pancakes.  So what better way to celebrate the former than by preparing the latter.  I found an excellent recipe for pancakes a couple months back that I've been looking forward to trying, and this father's day was finally the day.  

Bacon/Chive Pancakes

- 8 oz Bacon

- 1/2 cup sliced Green Onions

- 5/4 cups Flour

- 3/4 cups Cornmeal

- 1 tbsp Baking Powder (Not soda....a terrible mistake I've made before)

- 3/4 tsp Salt

- Pepper to taste (whatever that means)

- Cayenne to taste (see above)

- 2 Eggs

- 4/3 cups Milk

- 2 tbsp melted Butter

- 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar Cheese

Not my usual pancake recipe, I usually prepare the one handed down from my mother, but special celebrations call for special recipes.  I started with the slicing and cooking of the bacon, which I always find the toughest thing to do.  Not because cooking up bacon is particularly hard, but not eating the cooked bacon before using it in the recipe is always a struggle for me.  Alas, one bacon is cooked, I added the onions directly into the pan after removing from heat to allow the onions to just barely cook.  Drained out the fat and set aside for later.  The pancake mix was very straight forward, mixing together all the dry ingredients in the bowl, and then adding in the wet ones and whisking together until blended.  An interesting side note, apparently sugar is considered a wet ingredient.... I had no idea.   After mixing together, I added in the bacon/onion mixture along with about a half cup of grated cheese.  Another round of mixing and then let the mixture sit for about 10 minutes in order to let all the dry ingredients become saturated (not sure if that's the right term).  Cooking the pancakes was again fairly straight forward, plopping down small circular pancakes (about 1/3 cup of mixture per pancake) on a greased frying pan, flipping over once the edges around the pancake start to thicken and bubbles start appearing on the top. 

The plating was a bit tricky, as I wasn't sure whether to add the maple syrup for the shot or not.  As you can tell, I eventually decided on having the maple syrup with (along many practice photos were indeed taken).   The syrup was even a little bit special, as I added a bit of cayenne into the maple syrup and warmed prior to serving.  Gives the syrup a bit of a kick but nothing too spicy.  Overall a fantastic dish, one that will definitely make the rounds again.