Oatmeal Pecan Spice Pancakes

It's always nice to return home. Even after an awesome adventure there's something so comforting about curling up in a couch you're familiar with and with a warm breakfast and a hot cup of tea. For the past few weeks I've been living in Pennsylvania, exploring the east coast and working on an organic farm. It was a wonderful, spending my days working outdoors, cooking with fresh ingredients, and learning more than I ever imagined about planting growing and harvesting produce. I'm slowly compiling the pictures I took there so I'll post more about my trip later.


Anyway, this morning I woke up with the urge to make something special for breakfast and so, after a bit of thought, I decided on oatmeal pancakes. Not just any oatmeal pancakes though, oatmeal pecan spice pancakes...oh yes, they were amazing.

Oatmeal Pecan Spice Pancakes

3/4 cup old fashoined oats
1 1/2 plus 2 tbsp buttermilk
3/4 cup flour (whole wheat or whole wheat pastry is best)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
Generous grate fresh nutmeg
pinch cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg, lightly beaten
2 tbsp butter, melted
1 tbsp packed brown sugar
1/2 cup pecans toasted and roughly chopped

Soak oats in buttermilk 10 to 20 minutes

Whisk oats soak, mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg and salt.

Mix oat/buttermilk mixture, egg, butter, and brown sugar with the dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in pecans.

Heat a griddle over medium heat until hot and lightly brush with oil or butter. Working in batches pour 1/4 cup dollops of batter onto the griddle and cook until the edges solidify, bubbles appear on the surface and the bottoms are golden brown. Flip with a spatula and cook the other side until golden brown. Make sure griddle remains oiled in between batches

Top with maple syrup, butter, or whatever you prefer and enjoy!

Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

First off, sorry for being away for so long...again, I promise this is the last time it'll happen. This time, however, I do have a legitimate excuse, somewhere in the midst of moving all my stuff from Berkeley back to Humboldt for the summer I managed to pack my camera (and thus all the pictures I took of my latest concoctions) away in some mysterious bag, it was only a couple days ago that I finally uncovered it. So, without further ado, I bring you the first update since Easter


Now, this is not my recipe however, this recipe is so amazingly delicious it has somehow managed to become a staple in my mental cookbook over the last few months. These chocolate chip cookies are by far the best I've even eaten (and being a huge chocolate chip cookie fan, I've tasted quite a few). They are everything a good cookie should be, densely chewy on the inside, crisp along the edges, rich, extremely buttery, and choc full of chocolate chips.


A few tips, for this recipe I brown the butter to a point bordering on dangerous. I wait until the little butter solids are very nearly black and the butter is a deep golden brown. So far it's seemed that the longer I brown the butter, the better the cookies end up tasting but be very careful not to go overboard and burn it or else you'll have to start over. Also, if you're more of a fan of a lighter cake-ier cookie, add 2 eggs instead of 1 egg and 1 egg yolk and you'll get a still rich and buttery but slightly fluffier version of this recipe. Finally, I halve the amount of chocolate chips in the recipe because I love the flavor of the browned butter in the cookie and I find it stands out a bit more when it's not overwhelmed by chocolate, but if you're a huge chocolate fan, go ahead and add the full ammount.

Since the recipe is not my own and I haven't done much of anything to alter it I'm simply going to provide a link to the website I got it from, but definitely try these out, they're pretty amazing.

http://familyfriendsandfood.blogspot.com/2009/03/improved-tollhouse-cookies.html