Oaty pikelets

 

First I made these excellent pancakes. You start them the night ahead, with some oats and buttermilk mixed together in a bowl and put in the refrigerator to soak. (We have a fridge! At last! Hooray!) The next morning, you have some for breakfast and a few leftover, cold, later on. 

Soon I realized that though they were fine hot off the griddle, I liked the leftover ones much better. I started making them just for snacking on. And once I was doing that, I made them a bit smaller, the better for eating out of hand. And once that happened, I finally realized that what I was making, in fact, was oatmeal pikelets.

 

They are somewhere between a pancake and a crumpet, not quite as holey as the latter but made en masse for toasting (or not toasting) later, unlike the former. If you have crumpet rings, as I now do, you can make them extra pikelety and a bit taller. If you don't, leave out the extra splash of milk from the recipe below and just make small, free-form griddle cakes. The batter will be very thick, so they won't spread much, and they will work just fine. 

Then when you're done, either way, let them cool and pop them into a bag, or bags, or some covered container, and put them away in your refrigerator, so that over the next week you can eat them cold or toasted, with butter or jam, or butter and jam.

 

OAT PIKELETS
repurposed from Orangette

2 cups rolled oats
2 c. buttermilk
½ c. all-purpose flour
2 T. sugar
1 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 T. milk, if using crumpet rings

The night before, mix the oats and buttermilk together in a large bowl. Cover and refrigerate for 6 to 24 hours.

When you're ready to begin cooking, take out the bowl of oats and melt the butter in a small saucepan. Leave it a few minutes to cool down a bit.

In the meantime, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. 

Add the melted butter, beaten eggs, and milk (if using) to the oat mixture and mix well. Add the flour mixture and mix just until it's completely incorporated. The batter will be thick.

You are going to cook these a little lower and slower than you might ordinarily cook pancakes, because of the thickness. Heat a skillet over a medium flame and brush a little butter on the pan. (I use the dregs of the melted butter that went into the batter.) If you are using crumpet rings, oil them too.

Set the crumpet rings in the pan, or not if you don't have any, and scoop the batter. A skimpy quarter cup is about right. That's about three tablespoons. When bubbles appear at the top and you can see that the edges are set, remove the rings and flip to finish. I find that the first side takes about four minutes when the temperature is right. The second side cooks a little more quickly.

Remove to a cooling rack and repeat until the batter is used up. 

For me, this makes 24 pikelets every time.

Comments

[Larry Smoot]

These sound so perfect. Weekday breakfast is always something quick, but the weekends are for a lovely breakfast and time together at our house. I must try these and dazzle my partner with them - I'm sure he's gonna love'em.
Thanks!

[Thorn]

Do you ever make girdle scones? That's my dad's specialty and your oatycake commentaries always make me hungry for them.

[redfox]

Larry: I hope you and he like them as much as I do!

Thorn: I don't, but clearly I should. Does he have a special recipe?

[Yer Mum]

These are the extreme best. Since you told me about them, I have been making them often, and would just like to point out that they also make good savory snacks, too as well as jam planks. For non-vegetarians, bits of smoked salmon are a seriously good topping, and scallions also nice with a dab of sour cream.

[Thorn]

My dad said his recipe is from (the amazingly titled!) Beard on Bread, but we were busy doing family things and I didn't look at the recipe itself. Oooh, and the smoked salmon and scallion versions of this are looking fantastic!

[Samantha]

These are astoundingly good! The first words out of my mouth were "Hot Damn!". I added 2T flax meal, and dropped the butter to 5T. But I know this is going in the regular rotation. Thanks!

And hey, congrats on the move to sunny CA. :)

[Jenne]

Oh. My. God. These are so delicious! I just thought they'd be a good way to eat more oats without the tedium of oatmeal, but they are AMAZING.

[Mum]

Ha! I own "Beard on Bread", but until this very moment, it never occured to me how funny the title could be!

[Lynn D]

The second time I made these I used rolled rye and some caraway seeds. Absolutely delicious (as are the oat ones), but use more buttermilk as they really soak it up.

[JL]

I made these for breakfast today. It's the first time we had homemade pancakes for breakfast. What deliciousness!

[redfox]

Lynn: Rolled rye, how cool! Where do you get it, or do you roll it yourself? We have friends who own a hand-cranked roller for making their own rolled oats, and I have coveted it ever since I saw it. Little kids seem to especially love it, too.

The only downside to this recipe is that it takes me too long to make a whole batch. (This is an issue because the baby only has so much patience for watching me cook.) I need a giant electric griddle so I can start cranking them out en masse. Maybe I'll try making a half batch next time, except that then we'll eat it all up really really fast.

[Samantha]

Making a double batch tonight, and an electric griddle would be awesome. Maybe I'll drag a chair over to the stovetop. :)

[Jenne]

by the way, these are really good with steel-cut instead of rolled oats, and I've also made them with half the butter and they're still delicious.

[John S.]

Where did you get the Wilkin & Sons jam!!

[redfox]

John: Months and months late to reply, but I got one jar in England and another for some unbearably exorbitant price online. The markup is obscene, sadly.