I organised a celebration breakfast at work, to celebrate a project that was completed, and made a heap of pancakes for it. During the organisational process, I had the lightbulb moment of cooking pancakes at work - that way they'd be nice and fresh and I wouldn't have to get up even earlier in the morning. However, the only things we have that can cook things in the office are microwaves and a sandwich press. Well, a sandwich press is pretty much two hot plates, so it could be used to make pancakes. In theory.
I did want to set myself a few restrictions though:
- I didn't want to make a mess on the sandwich press, as it's shared between lots of people in the office
- I didn't want to do anything that might risk the fire alarms going off
- I didn't want to hog the sandwich press for the entire day (so no slow-cooked stuff), obviously as it'd look really bad if I was just cooking instead of working
I pre-made most of the mix. We have milk at the office, and I didn't want to risk carrying my vegan "buttermilk" on the train, so I had a bowl of the dry stuff, and brought in the vinegar and vanilla.
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BTW, here's my trusty vegan pancake mix:
1 cup wholemeal self-raising flour (non wholemeal also works)
1 tbs sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 heaped tsp Orgran No Egg
1 1/4 cup milk (Edit: sorry, had milk written here before, but milk for me means soy milk)
1 tbs apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla
Whisk the vinegar into the milk, leave to sit for 5-10 minutes (this is the vegan buttermilk substitute).
Mix the dry ingredients together. If using wholemeal flour, I like to sift it first, as sometimes you get large chunks of the wheat bran stuff, and it leaves an unpleasant texture.
Mix the vanilla into the milky mixture. Mix milky mixture in with the dry ingredients.
Heat up a pan with a thin layer of oil. I like to measure out my pancakes with 1/4 cup of batter at a time, but you can put as much as you want. Flip over once you start to see a lot of bubbles rising to the surface, and cook the other side for about a minute. These tend to be somewhat fluffy pancakes. If you prefer flatter ones, add more liquid.
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Anyway, back to the sandwich press pancakes. There was a bit of debate about whether the sandwich press should be opened or closed. I think opened would be better, as it'd be more like simulating cooking on the stovetop, and it gives the bubbles a chance to rise. The general consensus was that closed would be better, as you get that nice brown cooked texture on both sides. I was a bit concerned that closed would mean really flat pancakes, but Geoff mentioned the sandwich presses have a control on the side that changes how low the sandwich press goes.
I organised a breakfast with the ex-grads / interns, and it was going to be a blind taste test. I was going to try both methods, but not tell anyone which pancakes were which, and have them decide which was better.
Here is the attempt #1, with the open lid sandwich press:
I stole someone else's idea of having a layer of baking paper, to prevent the pancakes from sticking to the sandwich press (and me making a mess in the event that this was a huge failure).
The pancakes themselves didn't turn out that badly. They were a bit dry, and they didn't really bubble, so it was hard to tell when to turn them over. Plus, I think the uneven surface of baking paper led to that weird crinkly looking texture on the top. They also took a while to cook. I went to my desk, read my emails (17 unread emails, new record!), and came back and they still weren't cooked. In the end, I only cooked them until both sides were somewhat brown, then put them all back on the sandwich press and put the lid down to finish them off.
Here is attempt #1, with the closed lid sandwich press:
Yeah... as soon as I let go of the lid, and started to see the batter creeping out the sides, I knew this was a bad idea. Still, I had to persevere!
You could almost call it a Mickey Mouse pancake. It cooked much faster than the no-lid one, possibly because it was also a lot thinner. They turned out a lot softer than the lid up ones.
To answer the question - whether you can cook pancakes on a sandwich press - I guess technically, the answer is yes. I mean, they were cooked and edible. The overall verdict from the taste testers was that the lid-down pancakes were much better than the lid up ones. Both sets of pancakes were pretty dry though (but maple syrup really helped with that).
I probably wouldn't use this method in the future if I didn't have to. What I ended up doing for the celebration breakfast (not the sandwich press experiment breakfast) was I cooked the pancakes the night before, and and reheated them on the sandwich press (better than the microwave, as that'd make them soggy). They were fine, still soft and fluffy.
As a contrast, in case you want to blame the vegan-ness of these pancakes for the crappy appearance, here are some blueberry ones I've made in the past.
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