My younger brother and my sister don’t remember them. Our older brother tried to make them, but they didn’t turn out. And dad doesn’t have the recipe, nor does he remember how he made them, though he does remember that he made them.
They were apple pancakes, and I’ve been thinking about them lately. Not the famous baked puffy apple masterpiece of pancake houses. These are thin slices of apple, cut horizontally to show the hole in the middle where the core was removed, then lightly coated with batter and griddled until browned and crisp on the outside, while the fruit inside is cooked through but still retains some bite.
Dad made them for us for breakfast when we were kids. They were one of my favorites. But when I thought of them in recent months, I was inspired to have them for dinner. Pork would be a good companion, given its affinity for sweet fruit flavors. I just needed to work out the batter.
Without dad’s recipe to rely on, I experimented a bit, settling on a classic pancake from American cooking legend Marion Cunningham.