Mardi Gras — Pancake Day revisited!

As always, the day before lent is Mardi Gras, and this year it falls on March 4th. As mentioned in a previous blog (found here, go read it!), Fat Tuesday is also known in many parts as Pancake Day. This year I wanted to revisit the holiday, so I made American pancakes with a little update, using jam as a decorative and delicious accent.

Never having been to The Big Easy, I was surprised to learn that Mardi Gras has ‘official colors.’ (Who knew?!) They are Purple, Green and Gold.

According to the site MardiGrasNewOrleans.com:

The official Mardi Gras colors were selected in 1872 to honor the visiting Russian Grand Duke Alexis Alexis Alexandrovich Romanoff, whose house colors were purple, green and gold. The 1892 Rex Parade theme “Symbolism of Colors” affirmed the colors’ meaning.

Purple Represents Justice. Green Represents Faith. Gold Represents Power.

To honor this, I made my pancakes using berry jam (purple), lemon zest (gold), and a little mint (green).

Here’s my mother-in-law’s recipe:

• 1-1/3 cup flour
• 2 Tbsp. sugar
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 egg
• 1 cup milk
• 2 Tbps. vegetable oil
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Mix together the dry ingredients with a whisk. Add egg, milk, oil and vanilla. Stir together and cook on hot griddle until done.

To make the fancy fleur-de-lis design, I used seedless boysenberry jelly, and put it in a plastic bag with the corner cut off.

Pipe the jelly onto the pancake on the griddle.

Now. Here’s the tricky part. When I flipped the first few pancakes, the jelly smeared. To prevent this, I took out my handy kitchen torch, and applied heat to the uncooked side of the pancake, until the surface was cooked just a little. When the ‘gloss’ of the batter was cooked away, it was ready to flip, and no longer smeared.

*Note: The fleur-de-lis is not directly connected to Mardi Gras, but does have connections to New Orleans. As a francophile, I just like the symbol. It doesn’t take a lot of skill to draw, and just looks fancy. You could also make swirls or hearts. Go crazy!

For more information and another recipe, take a look at my original blog on Mardi Gras and Pancake Tuesday here. Enjoy!

Update: I just learned that the National Cathedral in Washington DC has an annual Pancake Race. Check out the pics for the 2012 Pancake race here. And the 2013 race pics are here. Fun!