- I tried flipping the pancake in the pan.
Didn't work, it was too delicate,
and there was like all kinds of problems
and I truly thought
that defeat was upon me,
and I said to my colleague, Sarah Jampel,
I said, Sarah, I don't
think it's gonna happen,
if this next one doesn't work, we might
have to talk about
going back to just using
the batter in individual pancakes,
which there's nothing wrong with that
but I really had this dream
of this giant pancake,
and Sarah said, "What about
putting it in the oven?"
And I was like, an oven pancake?
She said, "I've never heard
anybody say those words before,"
and I was like, Sarah,
you're a goddamn genius.
["William Tell Overture"]
- Okay, the first thing that I've done
is mix together all-purpose
flour and, um, cornmeal.
If you were using more
finely ground cornmeal
keep all of the measurements the same,
it will totally work exactly as written,
you just won't get the
little bits of cornmeal
which I like, so look for
stone ground cornmeal,
you should be able to find
it in any supermarket.
This recipe, I played around a lot with
the leaveners and I ended
up with an entire tablespoon
of baking powder and
then just a little bit
of baking soda, half of a teaspoon.
The other thing that I'm
doing that looks weird
and seems weird is instead
of adding my dry ingredients
to my flour mixture, I'm
adding the dry ingredients,
that was sugar and this is salt, also,
a healthy amount of salt, but you need it,
directly into the eggs and then whisking
that together first.
Another part of the inspiration,
and something that I'm doing
a little bit differently,
starting with the wet
ingredients and then adding
the dry, which reminded
me of Clair Saffitz'
Reverse Creaming Cake Technique,
which I actually don't know if this is
truly connected to, but it was in my head,
so I did it, and it came out great,
so that's that.
You have your eggs, sugar,
salt, baking powder,
baking soda, and I'm
just whisking it until
everything is completely
dissolved and the eggs
are a little bit lighter and they look
a little bit shiny.
Next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do...
This is similar, you've probably done this
in cake batters as well,
adding half of your dry
ingredients and half
of your wet ingredients
and combining that, and then adding in
a half and the half again.
Again, I don't actually
know why I'm doing it,
I just know that I did it this way
from the very beginning
and it came out great
so why mess it up, you know what I mean?
I would not say that in the
end I'm making a caky pancake,
because actually the pancake is very light
and very floofy, it's got a great texture.
I think that the leavener
is really important in this
because of the cornmeal,
it doesn't dissolve
the way that flour will dissolve.
It retains its integrity and it absorbs
that liquid and the little
beads of the cornmeal
kind of plump up so they're heavy,
so the leavener is
really there to make sure
that the pancake itself doesn't feel wet
or gummy or leaden.
So this is the other
half, and on this addition
I'm also gonna pour in two
tablespoons of melted butter,
and I wanna mix it just
until it's combined
but a few lumps are okay,
you don't wanna over-whip
pancake batter 'cause it
will get a little bit tough,
so this makes a more
tender, lighter pancake,
to just have it combine,
and that's really all...
It takes.
Okay, and then now, obviously,
we need the blueberries.
It's a cup of blueberries, I tried it
with a cup and a half, it became all wet
in the middle and it wasn't nice.
Switching to a spoon because if I tried
to whisk this all the
blueberries would get stuck
in the metal parts, you know?
So that wouldn't work.
So that's it, batter's done.
You can tell already it's very active.
Baking powder kind of leavens on its own
as soon as it's combined with a wet thing,
and that is very much happening here,
there is a lot of bubbles,
there's a lot of action, Jackson.
[dramatic thunder cracks]
So you know it's gonna be even lighter
and I don't want to wait too long
so that all of this initial...
Air dissipates.
Goin' over to the stove.
I'm starting by combining
butter and a little bit of oil.
The reason why I'm
combining butter and oil
is because the oil is there to raise
the smoke point of the fat mixture.
If it's just butter,
for the amount of time
that this has to sit on top of the stove
before going into the oven,
and then being in the oven,
the butter would burn.
Having the oil there gives me the best
of both worlds, I'm getting all the flavor
of the butter and the browning properties
of the butter, like, I do want that,
and I wanna wait just
until some of this foaming
subsides but not too much,
and that's just a sign
that the fat mixture is hot.
I'm over medium-high.
And now I'm gonna add the batter.
You can just pour it all,
you don't have to move
the batter around the pan, just pour it
into the middle of the pan
and it will get to the sides.
So at this stage this
really reminds me, a lot,
of making a frittata, and in fact it looks
kind of frittata-ish,
it's starting to bubble up
around the edges.
If I were making a frittata, though,
I would be stirring
vigorously this whole time
to make sure that the egg mixture
was pretty uniform.
I don't wanna do that
here, all I'm tryna do
in this first stage is to make sure
that the edge is totally
set, that the pancake
is starting to brown underneath,
and I'm looking for a lot of bubbles
to appear on the surface
and actually break.
So you can see, that bubbling is actually
the fat that we added to the pan,
and not the batter itself.
We're really just getting
browning on the one side
that's in the bottom side
of the pan right now,
and the heating up of the pan is happening
on the stove top before it goes in.
The other thing that's happening
is it's looking a little bit more puffed.
I can see that the edge is pretty set,
this whole perimeter, and there's bubbles
all across the surface and a lot of them
in the middle are starting to pop,
which means that the batter
is, not only on the edges
is it hot, but through the center too,
starting to create larger
and larger air bubbles
that are rising to the surface.
I'm gonna put it in the oven.
[dramatic classical music]
Oh, it looks perfect!
It's puffed, it's set, it's bright yellow
from all that cornmeal,
it's still bubbling
around the sides.
It's puffy, but it's not
uncooked batter on top,
but it's really tender, tenderoni.
It's flip-out-able, but
it's also cooked through,
and we had to be okay with the fact
that this side doesn't see action,
as far as being in contact with the pan.
Very different from an ordinary pancake.
So, the reason why I like this,
and I was attached to the idea of making
one big one instead of using the batter
and going back into individual pancakes,
'cause this is great for brunch.
When you have a bunch of people over,
or even just a family of four
and you can't possibly
get all the pancakes
to come out at the same
time, and then you keep
'em warm in the oven, but
those oven-warmed ones
are never the same.
All right, so now we have to do the flip.
See, just flop it out.
And then you've got little blueberries,
and it's really giant, and it's just got
the most incredible color, and you can see
the little flecks of the cornmeal,
and it's totally cooked through,
and you already forgot that the other side
hadn't been browned, right?
You see this, and you forget everything.
So, the right amount of servings
that we arbitrarily
decided for this is six.
It is, you know, tall,
you're getting like...
We put the cake back into
pancake, you know what I mean?
You kind of get a wedge of pan-cake.
It's just all in the pronunciation.
Cuts like a dream, crispy on the edge.
It's about right, I think.
Ooh la la.
I just have a feeling
if I cut another wedge
I might get a friend,
you know what I mean?
We all need a friend.
[laughing]
Everybody needs a friend.
So one of the things I learned
from one of my friends is that these toast
very beautifully day after, or
perhaps even two days after,
so if you don't have the wherewithal
to get through six wedges of your pancake
on the day that it's made,
you can cut it in wedges
and put it in your toaster
or your toaster oven,
and apparently it's glorious.
I haven't had it myself because every time
I made it here, they disappeared.
Would anybody care to
join me for some pancake?
[excited gasp]
Let's go, Ry.
Ry had her hand up first.
First up, best dressed.
Oh wow, a whole party.
[laughing]
Have you not had giant jam pancake?
- No, I'm really excited.
- I haven't tried it yet.
- Okay, do you like butter and syrup?
- Sure.
- Great.
That one's already buttered and syrup-ed.
- Can I use this?
- Yep, of course.
Do you like butter and syrup?
- Love butter.
- Would you like to self-butter?
- Sure.
- Ew.
[laughing]
- Jesus Christ.
- This one will just be mine.
Do you guys like it?
- Oh yeah.
- Yes!
- [Carly] For real?
- Wait, I'm having a sleepover party
with my girlfriends on
Friday, so I'm gonna make--
- Perfect.
- This in the morning!
- Perfect scenario!
- Can you give me the recipe?
- I think you could
use, also, blackberries,
raspberries, strawberries if you cut it
into pieces.
- No chocolate chips,
according to you.
- Never.
- Why?
- It's just, like, so sweet.
- It is, it is so sweet.
- But somehow the blueberries aren't.
Are you gonna bring it to a friend?
- No, I'm gonna eat it myself.
- Oh good.
- Wait no, that's so big, Carly, no no no.
- Okay, okay!
Oh my god!
That's like--
- I'm not sharing.
- My grandma used to say, "Just as much
"as you can fit on the end of my knife."
That's how she would say, for dessert.
- Really?
- "Just as much as you
could f..." [laughing]
We were like, you're getting a piece.
Really glad you like it!
- I love it!
- Syrup?
- Yes, please!
This is perfect, that's great.
Thank you!
- It's like Sunday.
Everyday is Sunday around here.
I hope you guys enjoyed
giant blueberry pancake,
or big ole blueberry pancake, or blueberry
oven pancake, we're
gonna just get a little
trademark, registered,
certified on that one.
But really, yeah, one
of my favorite recipes
I've worked on in a long time.
Enjoy.
Like most of my great ideas,
the idea for this pancake
came about during a really nice,
long, hot shower one evening at home,
and this pancake was born
from the creative juices
that floweth, like the hot water,
upon my weary bones.
