Silver dollar pancakes (p. 644) and Pan-broiled grated potatoes (p. 298)

First off, there was a food disaster and I know that always makes my readers happy.

But first...

Pancakes! I wasn't particularly confident after my first pancake-making experience but my spirits were buoyed when I found out that the pancake recipe was wrong. I decided to climb back on the horse and make Silver dollar pancakes (p. 644).

The first step was to mix flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda in one bowl and eggs and a container of sour cream in another bowl. The sour cream/egg mixture didn't really want to mix together.



The ingredients were quickly mixed together. Don't worry about lumps! It seemed like a lot of sour cream compared to the other ingredients.




I used too hot of a pan last time (I think). The recipe gives almost no instruction on the actual COOKING of the pancakes--they must assume that everyone knows how to make them. So this time I used more butter and a cooler pan. Even so, my pancakes looked too fat. I was worried that they weren't going to cook all the way through...



They were attractive pancakes.



That being said, the recipe says that it makes 30 two-inch pancakes. I think I made more like 15 four-inch pancakes--still small, but not as small. Two inches? That is an INCREDIBLY small pancake. I know they should be the size of silver dollars but why would you want to eat such tiny pancakes? Why wouldn't you just make blini?

I figured that I would follow through on the "dinner for breakfast" them and decided to make hash browns. Although I love the little squares type of hash browns (and TJOC's recipe for those is absolutely delicious), Josh likes the grated type of hash browns. He volunteered to grate the potatoes if I would make the hash browns. I choose Pan-broiled grated potatoes (p. 298).

Josh grated several potatoes and piled them on a plate as I finished up the pancakes.



Do you see the problem here? You should. This is where we made the huge mistake.



The potatoes turned black. Apparently, when exposed to oxygen for too long (you should submerge them in water), potatoes turn black. They are still safe to eat but don't look particularly appetizing. The potatoes and onions are then spread in a pan with vegetable oil and butter. The potatoes stayed black.

Eventually I flipped them.




They browned nicely and tasted okay but still had that black tinge. I was really glad that it was just Josh and I eating them because I would have been extremely embarrassed to serve them to other people. I think I would probably just shake these out of a freezer bag in the future. Has anyone else experienced black potatoes?