Ratio: Variations on the Theme of Pancakes III

Third in the Ratio: Pancakes series. I'm participating in the Ratio Challenges this year, hosted by Seattlejo of Fat and Crafty, and experimenting with ratios from Michael Ruhlman's Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking.

No picture of this one and why is that? Because I managed to have so many problems putting this together, it's not even funny. It came out tasty in the end but quite frankly, I need to test my recipe revision to find out if it's really fixed.

Yesterday was my vārdadiena or name-day. (A vārdadiena is somewhat similar to a birthday, except that smaller in scale and you celebrate based on your name's position on the Latvian calendar. Let's just say, it's an excuse for a party or at least getting your favorite meal out of it.) I decided for dessert, I'd go ahead and make these up, not realizing that I hadn't finished writing the recipe out by its ratio.

Let's review the pancake batter ratio: It calls for 2 parts flour : 2 parts liquid : 1/2 part fat : 1 part egg + leavening + sweetener. Simple, right?

I left out the fat and forgot to increase my liquid because I played around with the sugar. So, my initial recipe looked something like this: 2 parts flour / cocoa / nuts : 2 parts sweetened, condensed milk : 0 parts fat : 1 part egg + leavening.

I had decided I would chop the nuts finely into a pseudo-flour and use that as part of the flour. Last night, I discovered that my Cuisinart mini-chopper would not effectively chop nuts. Instead, I got some walnut/pecan butter, some walnut dust and a bunch of chunks and whole nuts. Great. So, I dumped it in the bowl with the cocoa powder and pastry flour. Didn't really think about the ratio and the fact that I had just lost 1 1/2 parts of flour to a bad chopper without replacing it.

But wait, it gets worse. Not only had I forgotten to add in the fat, but the correct ratio calls for baking powder. I used baking soda. They're both leavening agents, but baking powder is double-acting. Baking soda is single-acting, which means you only get one "rise" out of it and it begins as soon as it activated. Baking powder can sit around a while. Luckily, I had mixed it and immediately began cooking it, but I'm not quite sure how much of a problem this is.

With everything else going wrong, I would up adding a lot of milk just to get the batter to thin out properly. When my husband started cooking them, they spread very far and very fast -- and weren't easy to flip. This is because of the missing part of flour and fat. We wound up quickly stirring in flour to get them to a cookable state.

In the end, they came out pretty well. Even the first one that spread like crazy and was a bitch to flip tasted great. I hit the cocoa measurement dead-on. They were extremely delicious and I only wished I'd had some fresh strawberries and whipped cream to top them.

Here's the revised recipe, the way I should have cooked them. I'll be making these again soon and will edit this post if there are any changes that need to be made, but if you try them, I don't think you'll be disappointed. Just mind the ratio, okay?