Favorite Friday Recipe: Peanut Pancake (Apam Balik)

This was one of my favorite treats growing up in Singapore.  It's basically a chewy pancake filled with crushed peanuts and sugar.  Fillings also include sweet red bean paste, coconut, or kaya jam.  I stumbled upon some great Singaporean/Malaysian food blogs lately and they have triggered my longing for foods from home.  I was so excited that this was relatively simple to make! 

Peanut Pancake (Apam Balik)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup All Purpose flour
• 1 tsp Baking powder
• 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
• 3 tbsp Sugar
• 1 Large egg
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 1/2 cup soy milk/milk
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract 
• Filling (which can be crushed peanuts mixed with sugar, jam, or Nutella in BK's case)

 Directions:

• Whisk dry ingredients and then add in egg, milk and vanilla
• Let the batter sit and bubble for a bit while you heat your nonstick pan up to medium
• Pour a thin layer of batter in the pan and let it cook/bubble
• Add your filling when batter is all the way cooked
• Flip into a semi-circle, cut and serve warm!

Best pancakes ever!

While back in Chattanooga, we went to Aretha Frankensteins, a small diner in a quaint neighborhood that is famed for its breakfast food and slow service.  M got the shrimp and grits and my niece and I shared the famous buttermilk pancakes.  They were amazing--enormous, but height wise as they were so fluffy.  Check 'em out:

And thankfully they now sell the mix so that you can make your own at home!  I heard the pancake angels sing when I spotted this mix.  I suddenly felt hopeful about tackling pancakes.  I am truly horrendous at making them.  They burn or aren't done in the middle or just taste bland, much to the supreme disappointment of B who holds a special place in his heart for his mother's pancakes.  Now, thanks to this mix, they at least taste amazing.  I just have to figure out now how to get them tall and fluffy and cooked in the middle.  Would a griddle and maybe a pancake ring (if such a thing exists?) help you think?