Cornmeal Pancakes (p.645) and Hash Brown Potatoes (p.298)

First off, the weekend's goal was to catch up on blogs. I've posted about five blogs in a few days (but they are all dated back to the date they were made) so even if you are a loyal reader of TJOTJOC, it is unlikely that you have seen all the entries.

I have been indexing the recipes that I have made--if you are looking for a specific recipe, I recommend going to the sidebar and selecting "index" and it will show you all the indexes.

I had the urge to make breakfast this morning (granted, it was around eleven, but whatever!). I decided to make Cornmeal Pancakes (p.645) and Hash Brown Potatoes (p.298).

I'm no expert at pancake-making. As you may remember, my first experience at pancakes didn't go perfectly. I am happy to say that the recipe had a mistake in it! Apparently the recipe says "tablespoons" where it's supposed to be "teaspoons". So maybe it wasn't my fault that the pancakes were weird!

I love cornmeal so I thought that these pancakes would be delicious.


First, cornmeal (mine was yellow cornmeal for the bulk container at Whole Foods), honey, and salt are mixed together. The honey did NOT want to mix in but I decided not to worry about it.





And a cup of boiling water (I boiled mine in a teapot) is then slowly added. Milk, butter, and baking powder is added. At this point it occurred to me that the recipe might need to be adjusted for the altitude so I looked it up. Yes sir, I was supposed to decrease the baking powder and it was too late...I really was hoping that it didn't matter.

An egg and flour are then added in--TJOC makes the point (over and over) not to overmix the dry in with the wet, so I barely stirred.




A lot of butter is added to the pan and a ladlefull of pancake batter is dropped into it.




Bubbles eventually form. The pancake is ready to flip until there are bubbles all the way through.




The pancake is then flipped and the other side is browned.




The final product:



How where they? WOW! Super delicious. I LOVE cornbread and these were buttery, sweet, and wonderful. They were easy and fast to make. These have 100% chance of being made again--I am absolutely in love with them.


So onto the hash browns....

Three cups of potatoes, finely diced. My potatoes are totally not finely diced--more like randomly diced. I don't think I would pass the first day of cooking school! Potatoes, salt, and pepper and fried in oil (it would be better if they were being fried in bacon grease but I didn't have any.




I was suppose to press them down into a cake. It totally wasn't working. I eventually gave up and just shook them around and let them brown.



The recipe then says to pour a quarter cup of...what's that?



Cream?? Why would you pour cream all over hash browns? I've totally never heard of that...not that I'm an experienced short order cook. So I poured it on there--even though it seemed bizarre.





But I'll be damned!! The cream totally soaked in--they weren't soggy at all!



They were AWESOME! Crispy on the outside, soft and delicious on the inside...wow were they good! They took a while to cook but it was worth every second. The breakfast was great! I'm totally making this in the future for guests!