How We Flip Over Pancakes During February — All Over The World

February is a great month to celebrate pancakes. All kinds of pancakes, all month long. Last week’s Shrove Tuesday often is called Pancake Day because people in such places as the United Kingdom — and areas where some form of Mardi Gras is celebrated — eat pancakes the way Lancaster Countians eat fasnachts. Some food holiday calendars declare that National Pancake Week is either the third or fourth week of February.

“Pancakes are endless,” says James Nudy, owner of Ida’s Cafe, 507 Rohrerstown Road. The breakfast, lunch and brunch restaurant, which recently celebrated its 10th birthday, serves a selection of about 15 different pancake flavors on its menu from 6 a.m. 3 p.m. weekdays (from 7 a.m. Some of those varieties rotate through the menu, Nudy says. “There are a few that we have at different times of the year,” he says.

The restaurant used to serve pumpkin pancakes only in the fall, but now makes them year-round because of their popularity, Nudy says. “I’m thinking of adding a new one (to the menu), and I don’t know what to call it,” he says. “It’s pineapple pancakes, and we’d put some apples inside and some shredded coconut on the top. “We have a sugar cookie pancake” at Ida’s, he says.

“It was Christmas time, and we had some sugar cookie mix in our cabinet, and I was home cooking breakfast for our kids. I saw that mix and the light bulb went off: I wonder how sugar cookie pancakes would taste, “So, I made it, and now it’s on the menu,” Nudy says.

Occasionally, a pancake will work its way off the menu at Ida’s too. A gingerbread pancake sold OK, he recalls, but it was too similar in flavor profile to the pumpkin pancakes in the fall. “So the pumpkins just took over,” he says. Some of the most popular pancakes at Ida’s, Nudy says, are the banana walnut ones, which are banana pancakes with warmed wet walnuts on top.

Blueberry and strawberry pancakes top the charts at the eatery, too, he adds. Pancakes, in general, compete with omelets and French toast for the most popular breakfast (and breakfast-for-lunch) dishes at Ida’s. The pancakes there are roughly 8 inches across; a full stack is three pancakes, Nudy says, and a short stack is two. Maple syrup, he notes, is still the most popular topping his customers use on their pancakes. But, he adds, for some of the sweeter types of pancakes, no topping is really needed. Maintaining high, even heat is the secret to making good pancakes, say the experts.

“The griddle you put it on should be good and hot,” Nudy says. “Make sure it’s at least 350 degrees or 375 before you cook them. He prefers to make pancakes on the grill at Ida’s. “The grill is more of a thicker steel, so it’ll hold the heat longer,” Nudy says. “A frying pan is thinner, so when you put the batter on it loses heat quicker.

“The grill is the best, but even the electric home units” hold a more even heat than a frying pan over a burner, he adds. Different kinds of flour will work in pancakes, he adds. “You can use your regular Bisquick, or all-purpose flour works fine,” Nudy says. While pancakes aren’t on the menu of her two restaurants — Commonwealth on Queen, 301 N. Queen St., or Commonwealth Kitchen & Cafe, 443 N. Mulberry St. — Rachael Vieni Reinmiller says she cooks them at home all the time.

They’re the favorite meal, she adds, of her husband, restaurant co-owner Mark Reinmiller. “When I make them at home,” Rachael says, “I actually really like a boxed mix; they’re called Kodiak Cakes. They have a bear on the box. It’s from Kodiak, Alaska. It’s a high-protein flour, super-healthy, and they’re delicious. I think there’s a little bit of cinnamon in them.

Then she adds frozen blueberries or strawberries, or chocolate chips, to the mix. “They’re sort of a fine art,” Reinmiller says. She uses a large, griddle at home — one that fits over two stovetop burners — to make her home pancakes. “I think you need that kind of space,” she says.

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