Hannah Miles's wake-me-up coffee pancake

 

I noticed that Hannah Miles does not make highly fluffy pancakes, but rather thin pancakes with smaller and fewer bubbles. Check the difference here. I will try the fluffy soon, but currently I am stick to Hannah Miles's style.

So today I tried wake-me-up pancakes. It consists of a pancake batter that has iced milk coffee and cacoa powder, and a sauce that has espresso coffee and coffee liqueur. For coffee liqueur, I chose this one. This drink is actually frequently seen in other treats such as Irish coffee, milkshake, cocktail, and especially the rocking B-52 cocktail. Coffee liqueur is thick due to the high level of sugar (33g in 100ml), and it smells rum with an infusion of coffee (of course).

The main point for wake-me-up pancakes is the ratio of coffee, sugar and cacoa nested in the batter and the sauce. It's actually up to each person's taste. If you dislike sweet, do not add as much sugar in the sauce because coffee liqueur already has a lot. If you dislike milk, do not add much milk in the iced milk coffee. If you love raw cacoa, try cacao nibs which has intense chocolatey taste, but without the sweet. And, if you want a strong coffee to really wake you up, try raw coffee powder instead of cacoa.

So far, I made wake-me-up twice with different ratios of ingredients as said above. The first one (below on the left), is sweeter with more milk and sugar. The second one (below, on the right), is less sweet with more coffee and cacoa. It's amazing that both tasted very nice, but my husband who has a sweet tooth, preferred the first, while I went with the second one.

Another point is that, pancakes can be fluffy at different levels according to the amount of baking powder you use. Following Hannah Miles, I only put 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder in 80g flour, but if you want more fluffy pancakes, try 1 teaspoon or even 2 teaspoons. Baking powder is the reason for bubbles that show up on top of the pancakes when frying. The more baking powder you have in the batter, the more bubbles there will be and therefore more fluffy pancakes.

Another tip for fluffy pancake is that you don't have to stir the batter too much. You don't need to have the perfect smooth and dropping consistency. You only stir a little bit, even though you will still have flour not yet completely dissolve in the batter. And last but not least, when you flip pancakes, do not tap on them because it will break all bubbles you have, and you will end up with something more like crepes. No fluffy. Not at all. So you should avoid this happening.

So, below is the full recipe that I have summarized for 2 persons, or 6 pancakes. 

Step 1: prepare the batter. Put the flour (80g), baking powder (1/2 teaspoon), egg yolk (1/2 or 1), caster/granulated sugar (1/2 tbspn), salt (a pinch) and iced milk coffee (125ml) in a large mixing bowl and whisk together. Add in the melted butter (1 tbsp) and whisk again. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg white (1/2 to 1) to stiff peaks. Then, gently fold the whisked egg white into the batter mixture. Let the batter rest for 30 minutes.

Step 2: making the coffee syrup. Put all of the syrup ingredients, including 60 ml of espresso coffee, 20-30 ml of coffee liqueur, 30-50g sugar, and 1 teaspoon of cacao nibs or coffee beans, in a pot and simmer over a gentle heat for about 5 minutes until thick and gloopy. Set aside to allow the flavours to infuse and the syrup to cool.

Step 3: fry the pancakes and garnish with 1) whipped cream or mascarpone cream (including mascarpone cheese and creme fraise), 2) a dizzle of syrup, and 3) cacoa powder dusted.

Probably I will be back with a more fluffy pancakes. Stay tuned and wish you have a good time!