Using Up the Pancakes, Episode III

As I was walking the dog today under leaden skies, I contemplated many things which had nothing to do with dog-walking or leaden skies -- pancakes, for instance, and the perennial question of what to do with all the leftovers. I was thinking, actually, that I ought to write a cookbook devoted to leftover pancakes and the various ways they can be pressed into service (besides just being reheated and eaten, which never happens in this house, because reheated pancakes aren't what people here want when they want pancakes).

I've already posted here and here about recycling them as dessert. Yesterday, as usual, we had pancakes for breakfast after Mass, and as usual Aelred made enough for twice our number to eat until they burst, and as usual by dinnertime people were itching for something sweet, and so I did the following, making use of about seven pancakes, one large apple, some leftover homemade pancake syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon, two eggs beaten into about a cup and a half of milk, and roughly a half-cup or so of homemade granola:

First I buttered my cast-iron skillet. You could use a larger or smaller baking dish, depending on how many leftover pancakes you have, and how many people want dessert. I laid four pancakes (these were nice whole-wheat ones made with King Arthur flour, but any kind will do), slightly overlapping, in the bottom of the skillet. Then I diced the apple, spread the pieces over the pancakes, and sprinkled them liberally with brown sugar and cinnamon. I poured on some pancake syrup and let it soak into the apples and the pancakes on the bottom, and while all that was soaking, I tore up my remaining pancakes into pieces and layered them over the top, and sprinkled on more brown sugar and cinnamon. Over all this I poured more pancake syrup and let everything sort of dissolve in it. Last I poured on the beaten-egg-milk mixture and while everything was dissolving even further, I sprinkled on a liberal topping of granola. I baked the whole thing for, I don't know, half an hour? Forty-five minutes? I've got to learn to attend to the passing of time, but anyway, I baked it until it smelled good and looked done.

The result was a kind of apple-dumpling-bread-pudding thing with a crispy granola crust, and it was delicious. Everyone said so, even the skeptics who greeted the vision of me with a cast-iron skillet in one hand and a platter of cold pancakes in the other with moans of "Not again." I suppose I do have this unfortunate tendency to obsess over a particular sort of recipe for weeks on end, and to those outside the immediate circle of my obsession (ie those who are not me), the pickings can grow tiresomely monotonous. But, well . . . nobody ever seems to tire of those Sunday pancakes, so I imagine we'll be eating them in various recycled guises for a long time to come.