12.25.2012

Nogcakes 1.0

It doesn't matter where you are, when the holiday season arrives there are always some nostalgic food items you want.  However, when living in Ha Noi popping by the store to pick up eggnog isn't an option.  So we did a little research and got cooking.

Turns out eggnog is a snap to make.

We followed Alton Brown's recipe, in particular using the cooked version as the chicken poop covered eggs here don't instill sanitary confidence and to top it off one person at the Christmas Eve festivities is pregnant.  We also got kind of lazy and didn't bother with the whipped egg white component.  The process was simple and resulted in a very creamy 'nog which we spiked with readily available rum instead of Alton's suggested bourbon. 

Check out the recipe here:



However there was one small glitch in an otherwise good plan.  Our party hosts requested we make about three litres of eggnog.  We quadrupled the recipe and the yield was over 4 litres.  Even more depending on amount of rum added.  That left us with almost 1.5 litres at home as extra.  Eggnog is great, but you can only really drink so much of the rich stuff.  Really - it's essentially drinking ice cream.  What to do with so much eggnog?

This morning we decided to try adapting our pancake recipe to use up some of the leftover 'nog.  We kept the dry ingredients the same, and simply added eggnog in lieu of the regular wet components.  The mixture was somewhat thick, so we added more rum to smooth it out to pancake batter consistency.   Milk would have probably been a better option but we were all out so the rum went in.

The recipe

1.5 cups AP flour
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
1.5 tsp baking powder

1 cup spiked eggnog
1/2 cup rum (or so)

We fried two pancakes up and stop to test them in consideration that they may need a fresh egg added to help with rising (as our eggnog was the cooked variety).  Turns out that the baking powder give the batter enough rising action on its own.

Results: the pancakes were clearly eggnog reminiscent with the nutmeg coming across loud and clear.  The rum was also a strong flavour component, in hindsight perhaps a little too overpowering. The pancakes browned nicely in the pan, but lacked the crispy edges I like possibly due to the fact that we omitted the melted butter from the original recipe (thinking that the cream in the eggnog would act as the fat component).

Future revisions: milk instead of rum to thin batter to proper consistency.  Add in melted butter as per regular pancake recipe (3 tbsp).

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