Experimental Oatmeal Pancakes

by Justine C. Tajonera

I don't write the word "experimental" for nothing. The story later.

The original South Beach Recipe of Oatmeal Pancakes (with my modifications in blue)

What you'll need:

• 1/2 cup old-fashioned oatmeal --> I used 1 cup
  
• 1/4 cup low-fat cottage cheese (or tofu) --> I used 1/2 cup
  
• 4 egg whites --> I used three whole egs
  
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract --> two teaspoons
  
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon --> 1/2 teaspoon
  
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg --> 1/2 teaspoon
  

Procedure:

Process the oatmeal, cottage cheese, egg whites, vanilla extract, cinnamon and nutmeg in a blender until smooth. --> I don't have a blender so I attempted to whisk everything by hand.

Spray a non-stick skillet with cooking spray. Add the batter and cook over medium heat until both sides are lightly browned. --> the batter totally fell apart upon frying so I added 1/4 cup flour to keep it at least looking like some kind of cake.

You can top the pancake with a low-sugar syrup of your choice.

Serves 1. --> Serves 2-3

Dealing with Disaster

I really saw myself successfully cooking this dish. No blender? Hmmm, I'll just use a whisk. However, that's the operative part of the procedure, apparently. A blender sort of makes the whole thing really mushed up and stiff so it doesn't fall apart in the pan.

As you can guess, my first "pancake" fell apart in the pan. The first thing I thought of was: I need flour! If anything, flour makes something formless have some kind of form. What I did notice was that I kept my cool. I wanted it to work, somehow.

The result was a kind of oatmeal cake crisp for the ones we fried and for the ones I put in the toaster, a kind of oatmeal pudding. Of course, it wasn't the best thing I ever tasted. But, it wasn't something I would throw out in the trash. :-)

According to Vier, the only thing he just didn't like about the fried version was it used up too much oil.

So there. No tears. It happens. And what you can do with oatmeal-pancake-disaster-in-the-making is to turn it into oatmeal pancakes that you can eat. What helped was seeing it all as an adventure. Nothing was going wrong, it was just a matter of taking a different turn.

(March 2, 2010)
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/nyxie/325008652/