Apple Pancakes,Whipped Goat Cheese & Streusel

I’ll start off by saying these pancakes were made in goddamn September, or something close to that. It’s January now, which means a few things: the holidays came around, I started taking antipsychotics for bipolar disorder that may have zapped my creative ~*~*SPARK*~*~ and quite frankly I have a bit of a bad association with these pancakes. For no other reason than it was really hot and I was on the first day of my period and suffering severely from cramps.

There you go! Pancakes and periods, fucking hell yes. I honestly don’t remember much about this day other than walking to my friend Thomas’ apartment with Bria and feeling like my bloated ass was too fucking big for any pair of pants. Let’s drop some SWASS into the equation from the heat and we’ve got a real misery broth brewing.

Now that you’re sufficiently turned off, it’s time to flip the switch back in the other fucking direction. You ready? Apple pancakes with caramel sauce and whipped goat cheese, topped with streusel. FREAK. out.

Now that I’m starting to think about them again, these may have been some of the best pancakes I’ve ever had both homemade and from restaurants. Well, that might not be entirely true. There’s a spot in Denver that made a pineapple upside down pancakes that will forever be seared in my brain the same way the cramps from this day are etched into the ole synapses. Fucking fuck cramps.

September means fall, which means basic things like picking apples and all of that shit. Hence the reason we spent the first half hour simply peeling a bunch of tiny hand-picked Michigan apples that mostly made their way into my mouth. I’m a real apple-o-phile in case you were wondering. File that away for your Steph trivia night that you’ll eventually hold when I’m a famous pancake-prenuer.

ANYWAY, we popped those delicious little sugar-carb-spheres into a food processor and had an instant applesauce of sorts. We slopped that into a bowl with some oatmeal (some processed into oat flour and some whole for texture), baking powder and some eggs until we had something that resembled a pancake batter consistency. A little lumpy and thick, just how I like my batter babies.

While I was busy scowling and mixing everything together, Thomas got to work with a stand mixer and goat cheese. To that he added some whipped cream. This stuff was a fucking delight, which makes sense. Thomas is a fucking delight. He also master-minded the caramel sauce and minded the bacon in the oven while Bria made the streusel. It was a quick mix of dark brown sugar, oatmeal and some cold butter grated with a microplane and mixed together. It was all coming together in a beautiful symphony and I couldn’t be a more miserable twat the whole time.

Once our pan was hot and eager, we got to dropping batter. A scoop goes into the pan and a bit of streusel went on top to help embed it into the batter before it gets flipped. This was a one way ticket to fucking Flavor Village (not risking trademark infringement on “Flavor Town”).

The pancakes were flipped, cooked, plated and ready to be generously topped. First, Thomas poured that sexy AF caramel sauce on top of the chosen stack…it was a sight. Some might say it was a money shot of caramel sauce bukkake perpetrated against barely legal pancakes. Others might think that’s ridiculous and in poor taste. They’re right on both accounts.

Bria then topped the sassy stack with the goat cheese and streusel. This could only be described as DIRRTY…yes with two R’s. It was straight nasty in the best way. I snapped photo after photo and was eventually parched. I grabbed a gin barrel-aged cider from Shacksbury Cider…because it’s amazing and the folks who run the joint are some of the nicest apple fermenters on the planet. I cracked it open, poured a glass and finished plating with some slices of bacon.

Cue gorging our bodies with pancake, goat cheese fluff, caramel sauce and streusel. Bite one, ecstasy. Bite two, ecstasy. Bite three, crabby again because it was fucking hot and I was in direct sunlight…sweating again. I went and sat by myself in the shade while Bria and Thomas ate their promiscuous pancakes and had a conversation like normal humans. 

The pancakes themselves were surprisingly fluffy and flavorful; not too sweet, the apples served moisture that lended to the bulkiness of the oatmeal for a perfect texture. The caramel sauce was as decadent and sweet as you’d expect, but the goat cheese brought it back to center with tangy, earthy notes. The streusel topping brought it all together with a nice, subtle texture. [chef kiss]

If you thought this post was in any way inappropriate, it’s not my fault. I don’t remember anything and only wrote based on second-hand accounts of the events that day. Blame everyone but me, unless you make these pancakes and are thrown into an orgiastic feast of the senses…like I know you will be. In that case, I remember everything and all of the words use to describe this steamy pancake session are mine.