Home › Quick Breads, Griddle Cakes and Waffles › Apple Pancakes
Apple Pancakes
1 tablespoon fat
1 teaspoon baking-powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup apples
2 eggs
Cinnamon
1½ cups flour
Milk
Cream the fat and sugar, add the beaten eggs, the flour sifted with the baking-powder and cinnamon, and the finely chopped apples. Then gradually add milk to make a medium batter. Bake on a griddle as for ordinary pancakes and serve in an overlapping row around a platter of pork chops or serve separately with roast pork, either hot or cold. Cooked apples or a dry apple sauce may be used with batter in the same way.
A savory griddle cake meant to go alongside pork rather than under syrup. Two quantities are left open — the milk and the cinnamon — and the batter's consistency is the thing to judge by.
- The milk is the variableExpect about 1 to 1¼ cups. "Medium batter" here means it pours from the ladle in a thick ribbon and spreads slowly on the griddle — thicker than a crepe, looser than a drop biscuit. Add the milk in stages and stop when it moves that way, since the apples release moisture as they sit.
- "Bake on a griddle"Period usage for cooking on the stovetop, not in the oven. A heavy griddle or cast-iron skillet at about 375F, lightly greased, gives a browned surface before the apple pieces have a chance to steam the cake soggy.
- FatButter or lard. Lard would not be out of place and suits the pork service; butter browns more and tastes sweeter. Either way it needs to be soft enough to cream with the sugar.
- LeaveningOne teaspoon of baking powder for 1½ cups of flour is on the light side by current standards. Two teaspoons gives a cake that rises more reliably.
- CinnamonUnmeasured in the original. Half a teaspoon reads as warmth alongside pork; a full teaspoon pushes the cakes toward dessert.
- The applesChop them genuinely fine — pea-sized or smaller. Large pieces stay raw in the two or three minutes a pancake takes. A firm tart variety holds its shape; the alternative given at the end, a thick dry applesauce, folds in more evenly but gives a softer cake.
- YieldAbout ten to twelve cakes of three or four inches, enough for four people as a side dish.
Pancakes served with pork rather than sweetened for breakfast point to a Central European habit often said to have arrived in American kitchens with German-speaking settlers, where Apfelpfannkuchen could appear as a course in its own right or as an accompaniment to roast meat. Apple and pork is one of the oldest pairings in northern European cooking, the fruit's acidity cutting the fat, and this recipe simply moves that pairing onto the griddle. The Butterick company was a dress-pattern publisher, and a batter leavened with baking powder rather than yeast could be mixed and cooked in the time it took the chops to finish. The closing note that cooked apples or leftover applesauce will do as well is the same thrift running through the whole volume.