Legends of Pancakes

At any restaurant, there are so-called "famous" recipes that the chef is known for and that guest return over and over to order. I asked a friend who lives near Asheville for the food that she'd recommend from Tupelo Honey Cafe. She immediately gave me two suggestions: Pimento Cheese and Sweet Potato Pancakes.

Looking over the recipes for both cheese and pancakes in the newly released Tupelo Honey Cafe cookbook, I felt compelled to attempt the pancakes. The cheese was easy enough with shredded cheddar, mayo, parsley, roasted red peppers; it did, however, call for three different types of mustard - not my favorite condiment by any stretch. I passed on the Southern-styled pimento cheese and embrassed the pancakes. I am still embracing them today.

This is a multi-step recipe. This is also a recipe that you want to make over and over. Here are the parts:

• The pancakes
• The peach butter
• The spiced pecans

The night before tackling the pancakes and peach butter, I prepared the needed baked sweet potato and spiced pecans. I mixed authentic Tupelo Honey and little cayenne and salt in a small bowl. Then I melted butter and added the honey mixture and chopped pecans. This was cooked for 10 minutes or so - you're looking for the pecans to become caramelized. When they reached that point, I removed from the heat and stored in the open where I could nibble at will.

In the morning I pulled a package of frozen peaches out and let them thaw on the counter.

Inspector Ivan

I re-read the directions with more care and realized that I'd need to let the pancake batter stand for one hour, so I got on the batter right away. I pulled the skin off the sweet potato and mashed the potato with Tupelo Honey, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

I pulled out my largest bowl and began to mix up the pancakes. I combined flour, salt, sugar, baking soda, and baking powder together and mixed in the mashed sweet potato and spices.

In another bowl I cracked three eggs...

Added three cups of buttermilk and some melted butter...

And combined...

And combined until smooth.

While waiting for the pancake batter to do its thing (whatever that thing is) I made the peach butter. I combined unsalted butter at room temperature...

with about 3/4 cup thawed and finely diced peaches, sea salt, and peach nectar (that's peach juice.)

After repeatedly tasting to be sure the peach butter was satisfactory (for quality assurance purposes naturally,) I moved on to cooking the pancakes.

It had been years since I cooked pancakes. And I had to cook them three at a time in my Calaphon pan as I don't have a griddle. It took a little longer, but I got all of the batter cooked in the end.

Bubbling Pancakes

Pancakes Flipped

Oodles of Pancakes

Before I started with the recipe, I had been planning to make a half batch. The recipe is designed to make large pancakes to serve four people, and there's no way I would ever eat that much. I searched online for information about freezing pancakes, and discovered the Freeze Happy website. Following the advice given, I can report that my oodles of pancakes freeze and reheat beautifully - particularly if they are smaller sized pancakes like I made. And I made the full recipe.

But was it worth it?

Sweet Potato Pancakes

I'm salivating just thinking about eating these tomorrow for breakfast. With a little real maple syrup, you've got a feast for your tummy and taste buds. I plan to heat those pancakes up in the microwave, add a very generous dollop of peach butter (which also keeps well,) and sprinkle on some spiced pecans. I may do the same thing for dinner!