Random Recipes 17: The Middle

This month's Random Recipes challenge, hosted as ever over at the lovely Belleau Kitchen, was The Middle - following on from last month's First and Last.

We were tasked with randomly selecting a cook book then making the recipe on the middle page.

I asked Mini-M to choose my book, and I'm sure there's some sort of conspiracy going on here... she chose 'Mornflake Oat Cuisine' which I 'rescued' a couple of years back from a clearance outlet because the retro feel appealed to me. (Just to clarify, when I say 'rescued' I mean bought because I felt sorry for it, not shoplifted!)

The NEW Oat Recipe Cookbook. What was in the old one? JUST porridge?!!

The middle recipe was for Cheese Pancakes, which I decided would be slightly pointless to make dairy free, and so bearing in mind the challenge advice for finding the middle recipe (if the number is odd, round down), turned to the previous page, and discovered that I'd be making...

Oat Drop Scones, (on page 63, although the chances of anyone else having this book are probably fairly small, and I'm doubtful that this post will inspire you to rush off and get pancaking, even if you do!).

As usual, I adapted the recipe to make it dairy free. Then as is also usual, I messed about with it - partially with good reason and partially just because! I'll explain the 'with good reason' bit first.

I'm not sure I had the right sort of oats, since after the recommended 1hr resting time, my 'batter' was pretty much still like soya milk with oats floating in it. Unsurprisingly, that makes BAD pancakes - I cooked one at this stage just to see, and ended up with a pile of oats sitting in a small lake of milk in the frying pan. Not really passable as a drop scone! So I added 1 tbsp flour, and then blended the mixture and let it sit another 15 mins. This time the pancakes worked well - phew!

Cooling in a tea-towel

 On to the messing-about-just-for-the-sake-of-it. I had some fresh pineapple in the fridge, so I decided to try making pineapple upside down pancakes. I took a slice of pineapple, dipped on side in demerara sugar, then placed it sugar side down in the frying pan to caramelise for a few minutes, before adding a ladle of batter on top and continuing to cook like a normal drop scone. It almost worked - the pineapple caramelised really well, but he mixture was too thin to stick properly to the pineapple, which ended up sticking up above the batter and meant the pineapple got dislodged during turning. Definitely one I'll be trying again with a thicker pancake mixture though...

Crispy caramelised sugar makes pineapple even tastier

And so finally, here's my de-dairified and slightly adapted recipe!

Oat Drop Scones (Makes 12)

• 100g rolled oats
• 1 large egg
• pinch of salt
• 1 tbsp SR flour
• 25g dairy free margarine
• 300ml soya milk 

Melt your margarine, then add the milk.
Stir in the oats and leave to rest for about an hour.
After resting, blend the oaty mixture, add the egg, flour and salt and give it another whizz.
Leave for another 10 mins or so.
Heat a griddle or frying pan and grease very lightly.
Drop half-ladles of the batter onto the hot griddle and cook until bubbles start to rise to the surface, (a couple of minutes) then flip over and allow to cook for another minute on the other side.
Cool on a wire rack lined with a tea towel to stop condensation forming and keep the pancakes fresh.

As Mini-M says about anything under a blanket... hide and seek pancakes!