Well, I'm standing here making pancakes and they look distinctly anemic--they're sorta limp and they keep coming out really dark but if I turn the heat down, they don't cook through the middle. (They taste fine though!) Now, I don't really know what the issue with my batter was b/c it stayed pretty runny too. The high altitude instructions caught my eye after it was too late to amend my ingredients. And, frankly, I probably would have ignored them anyway in a kind of, pshaww, could it really make a difference way?
You'll wonder if I learn from the past when I tell you the story that these pancakes made me recall. When I was a teenager, I lived in Aspen, CO with my mom and step-dad, Jack. When he was a child, Jack's favorite birthday cake was a chocolate cake with caramel icing. His grandmother would always make this for him and it made him feel special. I decided to make one for him for his birthday. By this time, I was experience at baking--breads, muffins and cakes. So . . . I made the cake and it turned out fine.
Then on the to caramel icing. I followed all the directions in the sage book, The Joy of Cooking. The icing finished, I put it onto the cake. And it slllooowwwwlllyyyy ran off of the top and down the sides to end up puddled around the cake. Hmmm. Not to be beaten, I scooped it all back up, spread it and quickly stuck it into the fridge, thinking the cold might help it harden a bit. 5 minutes later a peek into the fridge revealed the same scene. Once again, I piled it all up again, spread it, and rushed it into the freezer--with the same result. I was stumped.The cake was good if not pretty. You had to cut your piece, put it onto it's side and spread your own icing.
This was 1979 and Aspen still had what I will always think of as a "real" bakery. You hardly see them anymore--one with the glass cases full of pastries and cakes and breads. And a real live baker, wearing a white baker's hat and covered with flour. In Aspen, this was Mr. Cliff Little, owner of Little Cliff's Bakery. Shortly after my icing failure, I was in town and went into Little Cliff's to ask Mr. Little what had gone wrong. I explained to him what had happened and he laughed and patted me on the back. "Honey, you can't make caramel at altitude. The boiling point is too low and you can never get the sugar to the candy stage!"
Well, it made me happy to know that the icing failure was nothing I had done wrong--expect for trying to cook it at 8000 feet!
