Ruth from Oshkosh, WI (2017 Week 4: Batter)

Baker

Ruth

Location

Oshkosh, WI

Baking Challenge

Lace Pancakes

Give your batter creation a name – and tell us about your recipe.

For the Love of Corn. I made two pancake batters. One was a raspberry batter (thanks to Oakridge Farm for the berries) and the other was a vanilla bean. I looked at a bunch of recipes to find out how to incorporate raspberries into the batter without it turning into a sponge. It worked for the most part but the longer the batter sat at room temp the more it thickened and thus the chew of the red increased.

Now that you’ve survived The Great British Baking Show’s first-ever batter challenge, what words of wisdom can you share?

Just keep trying … and trying and trying. The twenty or so that turned out were probably only a quarter of the ones I tried to make. At first, I couldn’t decide on a shape. Then once I had found the corn topped with a heart idea, I had a hard time joining the two batters and making sure they stayed together when being flipped over. Then, I found out that the red batter takes longer to cook so I had to adjust the order I was putting the batter on the griddle. Thankfully my family really loves pancakes otherwise the thought of having them for lunch, snack, and supper might have produced many a tantrum.

Tell us about how you added a Wisconsin twist.

I wanted to do lacy Wisconsin cakes, but after finding my self inept at even drawing our state on paper, I decided that hearts were the way to go. At first, settling on the hearts challenge felt a bit un-Wisconsin so I drew a W in the middle of one, and then the trial-by-griddle began. Could I do a bird in the middle? Nope. Could I do wheat in the middle? Nope. Could I do corn in the middle? no … but I could do corn. So in the end I was able to draw corn and realized that the top half of a heart would complete the picture nicely.

How did you do?

Rocked it.