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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?
Sift together dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Whisk together wet ingredients in a small bowl. Combine wet with dry, beat together into a pancake batter, using the milk as needed to thin it out to your desired consistency.
Over moderate heat in a lightly greased skillet, pour batter in 1/2 cup portions, sprinkle with chocolate chips and/or walnut pieces, and cook until the edges set. Since the batter is so dark, it can be really difficult to tell when they're ready to be flipped, but each pancake shouldn't take more than a few minutes.