It’s Halloween Pancakes on parade! You know what? Pancake fun never gets old. And I got slightly better at this since the last time I did this for Boy’s Day a while back. I also learned not to get too ambitious with the pancakes. If you want to see a video of how it’s done, check it out. Do you know how hard it is to write backwards hiragana with pancake batter? Ha!
My creepy characters are easier this time. Here’s a refresher:
- Remember, steady hands! Seriously, the best tip I can give you is to get as small an opening as possible that will still allow the batter to flow. If your squeeze bottle is too big, just tape around the hole like I did.
- Keep the temperature low on your griddle. I had mine at just under the 300°F mark and it stayed consistent throughout the process and let me create.
- Be patient and allow the first outline to cook! You almost have to see the edges crisp before you start filling in the spaces.
- Flipping is fairly easy if your shapes are small. If you make a big one, I would use two spatulas. The finer parts stay surprisingly undamaged as you can see.
My favorite was the way Frankie turned out. Don’t forget to write backwards!
And since I already had the griddle out, we made breakfast. The leftover batter was made into apple pancakes. This is a breakfast for three all on one pan—I’m telling you, this is a very handy appliance to have around.
While we’re in pancake mode, let’s get into some Asian pancakes. Fans of what’s affectionately known as the Japanese pancake know all about okonimiyaki, but have you ever tried pajeon, the Korean pancake? Since we’re a Korean/Japanese household, we often have both because my wife loves her Korean food.
The ingredients are pretty simple for both of these—you can find recipes online anywhere, but just remember the batter is thinner than pancake batter. It’s more like crepe batter. And seeing how the Japanese word for okonomi literallly means “as you like it”, I don’t think you need to feel restricted at all. Korean pajeon is the same—ours only has some leftover pork, green onion and kimchi. Here’s the thing about good pajeon though; you must use aged kimchi to get that deep flavor. In other words, the more sour the kimchi, the better.
If you don’t feel like making your own batter, guess what? They sell batter powder mix at the Asian markets if you are lucky enough to live near one. We like seafood okonomiyaki so ours has some squid, shrimp and octopus in it along with the cabbage. Trader Joe’s sells bags of their frozen seafood medley that you can use, as long as you cut up the pieces into smaller bits for the okonomiyaki.
Pajeon makes a great lunch snack or appetizer when you do Korean Barbecue at home too. With good kimchi, you should get this nice orangey color, perfect for October!
For the okonomiyaki, Zojirushi has a recipe on their site that you can follow if you’re interested—they make it pretty easy; and like I said, you can buy a powder mix at the Japanese market and practically every ingredient you need there as well. This one is our own creation and I love to put all the condiments on mine—you can’t even see what’s underneath! LOL. But it’s “as you like it”, remember?
So here you go—two Asian style pancakes that represent our bi-cultural, bi-cuisine family; Okonomiyaki and Pajeon.
This month I also had my Breadmaker out because I had originally planned to do something else for Halloween but I couldn’t use what I baked (more on that later). What we did though was make some classic Bread Pudding using homemade bread. Even though bread pudding calls for day old bread, and it seemed like a waste to bake fresh bread just to leave it out to sit and dry out a little bit, my shoku-pan was still the perfect consistency and taste for this dessert. It’s like bread pudding taken to another level.
The other thing I liked is that all the ingredients were lying around the house already, so all we had to do was put it together.
If you have a toaster oven, you don’t even have to crank up your regular oven—it comes out golden brown and full of autumn flavor.
There are lots of ways to enjoy bread pudding, and this is just one—with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I have to say, without the benefit of milk or cream or drippy glaze, this is the best way to taste the goodness of your homemade bread.
Now back to my other baking adventure which was a total fail this month. I was going to make Halloween cake pops using the cake setting on my breadmaker. Everything was going great until it came time to dip the cake into the melted candy (you can see the struggle here), and trying to decorate it with icing that started to drip. This is proof that I tried, but oh well… If anyone has any tips on why I failed, let me know. I really want to try again sometime.
Happy Fall, everyone!
Products used in this post: Home Bakery Maestro® Breadmaker BB-SSC10, Gourmet Sizzler® Electric Griddle EA-DCC10, Micom Toaster Oven ET-ZLC30
Please note that these recipes were not tested by Zojirushi America.
All images by Bert Tanimoto ©2024
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