Saturdays are for Hotcakes
Every Saturday that I wake up at my grandma’s house, I can depend on one thing: there will be hotcakes. When my brother and I were kids spending summer vacation with my grandparents, she would even deliver them to us by spatula (one at a time, hot from the pan) as we sat watching cartoons in the TV room.
As a teenager, I would wake up at noon and the cast-iron pan would still be waiting on the stove, with a pitcher of batter beside it. And as a college student, I could roll out of bed around 1 pm and yet, I could always count on hotcakes.
Even now, as a married 33-year-old woman, not much has changed. Well, I get up much earlier and actually sit at the table instead of the couch, but the idea is still the same.
The pitcher of batter is still waiting by the stove and my grandmother will be standing beside it, waiting for the oil to get hot. Then she’ll drizzle in the batter and slowly move the pan so that it spreads out flat. I usually hover beside her while she makes the first one — just like I used to as a kid when we would find shapes and animals in almost every hotcake.
Then she’ll wave me over to the table, where she’ll serve me one hotcake at a time, right from the pan, each one balanced precariously on the spatula.
If you’re curious about the idea of the hotcake, thinking it looks very different from the pancakes you might know and love, you’re right. They are very different. Swedish hotcakes are like a cross between a crepe and a pancake. They are fairly thin, which is why they seem to taste best rolled up with syrup or jam inside, but they are not at all delicate.
Jam-filled goodness
