UK's The Daily Mail has an article about my pancakes!  http://tinyurl.com/cfxrndn

The book is out!

I'm very pleased to announce that the book is out. Because it's been published by Barnes and Noble you can only get it from them. That's bad for me because you can only get it there, but good for you because it means they're less expensive than if they were available everywhere. They've cut out the "middle man." It comes with the bottle and step by step instructions on how to get your pancake "game" on! The hole in the top of the bottle is a little small. Cut a little off with a pair of scissors. Be careful. It's hard to put it back on. Take a look!

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/extreme-pancakes-michael-goudeau/1102052828?ean=9781435137585&itm=1&usri=extreme%2bpancakes&cm_mmc=AFFILIATES-_-Linkshare-_-je6NUbpObpQ-_-10:1

Thanks friends.

Michael

Color stacks

Just making stacks of tiny colored pancakes. I think I need to see what's the tallest one I can make.

Christmas Tree

This one turned out pretty nice. Obvious plug time: Extreme Pancakes will be out in stores in time for Christmas. It comes with a drawing bottle and all the instructions to make everything here and more. Tell your friends. Please.

Drips

Hi Pancake Pals. It's been a long time. There's a reason. The Pancake Project has been picked up by Sterling Press. It's going to be a book. It'll be out as a "How To" kit complete with a bottle sometime in September. They've chosen the name, "Extreme Pancake Kit." It's got instructions on how to make a lot of funny pancakes and a couple of really pretty ones. This photo is of one of the really pretty ones. The texture on this turned out amazing.

I could use some help. If any of you have connections to a magazine that might run an article about the kit let me know. I need to get some publicity to try to sell some books. Get me a successful lead and I'll send you a copy of the book when it comes out.

About this pancake: It's all drips. I had some colored batter left over from another project and just started dripping it on the griddle. That's how I made those leaves. It really built up into a beautiful texture.

Pumpkin Patch

Another set of Flavor/Picture pancakes. Pumpkin flavored pumpkins. You know I love the flavor matching the picture.

Here's my recipe for pumpkin pancakes:

1 cup flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1 cup milk

½ cup pumpkin puree

¼ cup brown sugar

1 large egg

Mix these all up so the batter is smooth. If you’re looking for a little more orange appearance you can add yellow and red food coloring.

The only trick to this pumpkin is to get the grill pretty warm and start with the middle sections. As you do each stripe wait a few seconds for it to cook before you start the next one. That’s how you end up with the pumpkin striations.

I also made a tiny bit of “regular” pancake batter and put a few drops of green food coloring in it to get the stems.

It’s Halloween today so my kids carved one of them into a Jack-o-Lantern. I made a little bit of pancake batter mixed with yellow food coloring and set the pumpkin on top of it to get a little depth and light into the picture. I bet a yellow plate would do that for you too.

Colors

Man, pancake batter can really take some color. I was pretty excited by the way the colors turned out in the Taco Platter (Dec. 13, 2009) and the Corn on the Cob (Feb 16, 2010) but they're pretty wimpy when you quit messing around and add some more food coloring. These look like foam rubber. The color did not mess up the taste.

One trick to keep the color from browning as you cook these: Keep the griddle a little cooler than normal and let the pancakes cook slowly.

I need to say thanks to Carl for coming over and taking the photos. My camera has died. Carl did that fancy out of focus thing on the Roy G. Biv pancake.

The Real Trick

Ketchup bottles and timing.

Something great happens when you draw a couple of spots and a smile, then wait a minute before you add more batter to make a round pancake. The pancake batter that was first on the griddle browns more. So draw a face and wait a minute. Then add enough batter to create a round pancake right over the top of the face.

When the round pancake has cooked a little flip it over to reveal your artistic creation. Those features you drew first are now a darker color than the rest of your pancake. You’ve created a smiley face pancake and you've learned the biggest secret to great pancake art.

There are more secrets...

Cut the end off your ketchup bottle so that a little extra batter will come out. Not too much. It's really hard to glue that end back on.

Join the pancake rebel alliance...

I'm going to tell you do something in direct defiance of the pancake experts. Beat the batter with an electric mixer. Science tells us that beating pancake batter will make the final pancake tough. The toughest pancake I've ever seen was my FlapJack Bauer. (See December 29th, 2009) It wasn't too tough for a little butter and powdered sugar.

"The following takes place between 8 AM and 9 AM:" I ate FlapJack Bauer.

So beat the batter with a mixer. It should be thick enough that you can turn the bottle over without the batter running out, but it needs to be thin enough to pour slowly and smoothly into and out of your plastic bottle.

YOU MUST HAVE NO LUMPS!

Lumps are death. Lumps will block your “instrument.” When I say “instrument” I mean a cheap plastic ketchup bottle. Lumps don’t squirt out the nozzle very well. It can be somewhat frustrating to be one step away from completing the perfect replica of Edvard Munch’s Scream only to have it ruined by a blocked flow of batter or an explosion once the lump releases. If this happens to you a few times in a row you may recognize yourself in Munch’s work. (See November 19, 2009)

There are more tricks to be posted soon, including my secret weapon.

Another Basic Pancake

Once you've got "round" going you'll want to start messing with other shapes. One big pancake and two little pancakes and you're squarely into copyright infringement.

I’ve decorated the ears and head by smearing chocolate syrup with my finger to get this somewhat familiar looking mouse. The eyes are slices off the end of a banana with blueberry pupils. That enigmatic smile is a slice of strawberry. Chocolate syrup can do a lot for your pancake art, both in decoration and in flavor. If you’re feeling crazy and have the supplies you can paint chocolate syrup on with a paintbrush. This could be an entire field of mostly unexplored pancake art for the right person.

WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU?

That's the first question people ask. The second is, "Why?" The third is "How?" and finally we come to one I can answer. Let's start with basic pancake art.

These are round or mostly round. They’re decorated versions of the “standard” issue pancake you’ve loved all of your life. These are what you'll get if you order the “funny face” pancake at your local pancake establishment. With these I use a little fruit, chocolate syrup, whipped cream, or anything else you wouldn’t mind eating on a pancake to decorate them. If you'll go back to the pancakes on the blog from 2009 you'll see a couple of really simple pancake examples of this. The sun and the worm are both just round pancakes. So is this cat. He's pretty simple: Strawberry ears sound delicious, a blueberry nose doesn’t smell, and you can see the eyes are slices of grapes. Any questions here? This is as basic as a pancake gets at my house.

Lincoln

I was thinking about Log Cabin and well...

What? A recipe? Not even a picture?

I'm not really keen on pretending that I have the best pancake recipe in the world but in this case, it didn't seem right holding back on you. I had this pancake at Teller's house a couple of days ago and it was great. I had no choice but to beat the recipe out of him. You should make these. Really.

This pancake requires planning ahead. Planning ahead is on top of my list: "Stuff I'm Not Very Good At." Then my wife called from the grocery store . At the top of my, "Stuff I AM Very Good At" list is telling people what to do. The pieces were falling into place.

Soak 1 cup of quick cooking oats in 1 cup of buttermilk overnight.

At pancake time add 1/4 cup all purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, two eggs, 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar, and two tablespoons of melted butter. Stir it up.

Plop some of the batter onto your 400 degree griddle and stick blueberries into the batter. Flip it. Eat it. Duh. Duh-licious. I put a little butter and syrup on mine.

I'm pretty sure that because of the low amount of flour in this you could probably use one of the gluten free flour or pancake mixes in place of that measly 1/4 cup of flour and this would still be a good pancake. Most of the gluten free pancake mixes we've tried are pretty bad on their own but this might be the Holy Grail of wheat free pancakes.

THIS JUST IN: I made the recipe and did replace the small amount of wheat flour with a 1/4 cup of wheat free pancake mix. The difference was not noticed and they were so much better than making the wheat free pancake mix on its own.

More Viewer Pancakes

Here are a couple more Viewer Pancakes:

The lovely smiling face there is a self portrait submitted by Stephane Sofia. Clearly she's a babe.

The one on the blue table cloth is a very ornate chariot submitted by Bunny Nuhfer. She didn't have time to create a beast of burden to pull it so she hooked it to a frozen porkchop.

Corn on the Cob

It's Pancake Day!

In honor of this I'm trying a new level of pancake art. Not only is this pancake 3-d it is "Flavor Dimensional." The "corn cob" is a rolled up corn pancake. It's not the best looking pancake I've made but it tasted great. I'm going to make more flavor dimensional pancakes.

It's been awhile since I posted a pancake. I had a pan disaster. I'm a juggler and I was flipping a pancake with perhaps a little too much gusto. The pan part flew off the handle, bounced off the stove, and crashed to the floor. It landed on a rubber mat. It melted the mat and was stuck before I could get it up. Turns out once the handle is gone a hot pan is hard to pick up. Who knew? Okay, everyone but me.

I took this opportunity to switch to a giant fancy electric pancake skillet. It stinks on ice. Everything sticks to it no matter how much I spray it. I did do a few Valentine's Day pancakes for the family but they were pretty standard red batter hearts with words in them. I was also not paying a lot of attention. I had an orientation error. When I flipped mine, rather than "Dad," I had written "Dab." I stuffed it into my mouth before anyone caught the error.

In honor of Pancake Day I went out and purchased a new stovetop pancake griddle. This "Corn on the Cob" is the first pancake made on it.

Later this week I'll be posting a couple more "viewer pancakes."

FlapJack Bauer

I've made a lot of pancakes for the kids. This one is for my wife. My friend Karl suggested "FlapJack-O-Lantern." This is inspired by his use of flapjack and my wife's obsession with "24."

Michael Wilson's Pancake

Pancake fan and friend Michael Wilson sent in: Saturn And 61 Moons. It is very high on my list of favorite pancakes ever.

I know the count isn't right. He has assured me that a number of the moons are obscured by the planet.

Taco Platter

Buenos dias! Its time for breakfast!

Who doesn't love a little maple syrup on their refried beans?

No beans, no cheese, no lettuce, no meat, not even a tomato. This is 100% pancake.

Leggo My Eggo!

"Dude, I told you. Leggo my Eggo!"

Look, I'm topical! Apparently, due to problems at a couple of waffle plants, there will be a shortage of Eggo waffles until summer.

Thanks to Guinness Book of World Records holder of the title, "Man with the largest head" Mike Mooreland for the suggestion. I would like to mention that this is an actual Eggo waffle.

Marshmallow Me

Salon.com has a weekly funny food contest. This week they're asking, "What do you drink during the holidays to relax when you're done with the work?"

My answer is hot chocolate. I know. Not very exotic. I do use the really good hot chocolate if that's any help.

I don't drink any alcoholic beverages. They all remind me of the hospital. Not because of some horrible drinking and driving accident thing. Its the smell. Ick. Who wants a drink that smells like something you'd pour on an open wound? So, smell and the way people behave when drunk keep me away from the stuff.

Here's the thing though. I'm a foodie. I thought it was something I was missing out on so I tried to learn to drink wine. I found myself doing that little kid "horrible taste" whole body shake trying to get it down. I've tried enough. I can confidently say there has never been a glass of wine as good as strawberry Kool-Aid.

Amanda Havlik's Pancake Art

This was a big weekend. I received pancakes from 3 viewers.

Amanda didn't name hers but I'm thinking "The Bunny and Mr. Bill."

Here they are in their last moment before the Great Syrup Flood of 2009.