Bacon White Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Apologies in advance for the somewhat poor quality and selection of photographs. Everything was cooking far too quickly for me to keep up with.

I know this sounds kind of completely weird but I promise you it was amazing. Aunt Jemima and I got to know each other a little better today. I woke up at after noon expecting that I would have to rush and get prepared for a performance that I had. Instead I woke up to the news that there was no performance. While a bit disappointed it meant I could go back to my bed which I was dying to do since I didn't go to be until 6:30am. So I picked up a book and decided to enjoy the unexpected leisure time. I obviously picked up the wrong book if I had planned to go back to sleep because once I opened Kenny Shopsin's Eat Me I was filled with the instant desire to cook something. I lay in bed for a while thinking what might have been available in the cupboards of a household that rarely cooks. First I decided on eggs but then my brother informed me that we had no milk and there went my plans for delicious fluffy scrambled eggs. Then while flipping through the book I landed on one of my favourite looking recipes, bacon pancakes.

"Bacon pancakes and Bacon French Toast both remind me of pussy. When you press the cooked bacon into the raw pancake batter or French toast, it really likes to sink in. When you flip the pancakes back to serve them bacon side up, the bacon is in there, enveloped by soft walls. It's really very sexy." (page 91)-  Kenny Shopsin's words on bacon pancakes and French toast. While being a heterosexual female the idea of pussy doesn't appeal to me, but bacon anything in my books is just amazing.

The process began with me cutting up the frozen bacon (real bacon not turkey bacon or any other substitue- not that I have anything against them) into small pieces but not small enough to be considered bacon bits. Shopsin uses entire strips in his pancakes. I didn't expect that there was enough bacon left for me to do this so I cut up what was left and then fried them in the frying pan. When the bacon was done I removed the pieces and rest them on a plate with a paper towel to remove the excess oil.

While the bacon was cooking I mixed two cups of Aunt Jemima Buttermilk Complete Pancake and Waffle Mix with one and a half cups of water and whisked the batter together. In the end I added a little more water to make the mixture slightly thinner. After the bacon was done I put some of the excess oil into the batter to give the pancakes a general aura of bacon flavour.

I scooped out the first quarter cup of batter and poured onto the hot frying pan. Then I added the bacon, about three pieces and pushed them into the batter. I waited for bubbles to appear and then I flipped it. I was actually disappointed in the way it came out. The first two that I made I did using Shopsin's method and I found that when I flipped them the bacon it cooked it even more and I didn't like that. Generally I don't like my bacon really crispy so the extra cooking wasn't for me. Then I decided to pour the rest of the bacon pieces into the batter, stir things up and cook it like that. It worked so much better and all my pancakes came out better after that.

Somewhere when the batter was half finished and my brother and his friend had eaten their first helping I remembered the fun sized packs of M&M's we had and I wondered how M&M's pancakes would be. Then inspiration struck and I remembered the Hershey's white chocolate chips that were in my fridge. I opened the bag and sprinkled a few into the remaining batter and cooked the rest of pancakes.

When they were all done and I sat down to my "breakfast" at three in the afternoon I bit into one of the pancakes with a chocolate chip and there was a flavour explosion in my mouth. The sweet complemented the salty savory flavour of the bacon and it was all just beyond great. Domo (my brother's friend) said, "they are awesome" and Doodie (my brother) said, "it was like my taste-buds got head".