Part of my youth revisited

When I was growing up this particular pancake was like a mythic creature that we all wanted to catch a glimpse of just once.
In 1975, when I was 10 years old, my family moved from Mamaroneck, New York to Winnetka, Illinois.  Besides the culture shock we had to learn our way around the new environment and one of the places that stood out for me and my friends throughout the years was Walker Brothers Original House of Pancakes.  OHop, as we referred to it, was nothing like it's IHop counterpart.  OHop served these strange pancakes from distant lands, as well as other fantastic breakfast items. I spent a lot of time sitting in booths at this restaurant and eating every configuration of pancake created in countries near and far.

Like the restaurant itself, there was one pancake that stood out from all of the others, the apple pancake.  The apple pancake was a work of art with apples and a caramel crust the sat atop a beautifully custardy kind of home for all of this yumminess to live.  I have to admit that I have ordered other apple pancakes at other restaurants and have never found one that could hold a candle to the original.....till now.

I get emails from The Kitchen and they sent me this article about "THE apple pancake" and my toes started to tingle so I read further.  When I saw the picture I think that I was in a sort of altered state....could it be?......could it be the same as what I remember?  The only way for me to know was to actually make it myself, so I did.

It was like a dream from my youth, warm and sweet.

This version is as similar as you can get to the OHop original with the exception of the dark brown, crunchy, can't eat it for 20 minutes because it will cause 3rd degree burns in your mouth candy type coating BUT.......I have to say that I really didn't miss that part of it too much.  I think that I could get that crunchy caramely  top (actually the bottom) if I cooked the apple and sugar more before I put the batter in but I was so happy with this attempt that I can mess with it the next time I make it, and there will be a next time!

Now that I have found this recipe I can share it with the ones that I love and pass on the goodness that is THE apple pancake.  Thanks to Jennie and her mom for this and for ending my search for one of my favorite breakfast food and reawakening a ton of memories from my childhood.

You can find the recipe by checking out this post at The Kitchen.

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