Heavenly Hots

These are without a doubt the lightest, most tender, ehtereal pancakes south of St Peter's Gate. Amanda Hesser's Recipe Redux column in this Sunday's NY Times features this dish. Her descriptive adjectives for these cakes are "feathery, creamy, and tangy". The cakes are the creation of chef Bob Burnham-I could find no information on him other than what I read in the Times article. He once worked for John Hudspeth who opened Bridge Creek Cafe in Berkley in the 1980's. Hudspeth's friend, Marion Cunningham included the recipe in her "The Breakfast Book", also published in the 1980's.

Here is the recipe as printed in today's Times (and also in 1987), and here is my picture of what they looked like when I made them this morning. I paired them with some fresh blackberries and a very light blackberry syrup. Because of the ratio of flour to eggs and sour cream, they have a texture of custard or pudding. Be warned they are difficult to flip because the batter is so loose.

4 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

4 Tablespoons cake flour

2 cups sour cream

3 Tablespoons sugar

Solid vegetable shortening for greasing your griddle.

Whisk all the ingredients together except the shortening. Chill the batter overnight (I chilled it only for one hour).

Grease your griddle with the shortening. Whisk the batter again and drop the batter 1 tablespoon at a time onto the griddle. The cakes should spread out into circles no larger than 3 inches.

When bubbles begin to surface on the cake, flip the cake and cook briefly on the second side, the interior of the cake should be somewhat creamy. Serve with light syrup.