I am nothing in the kitchen if not a great experimenter. Well, an experimenter, anyway. Just ask the several people who have enjoyed my cooking without any trace of personal injury. And when wolfekko sent me an isolated outtake from Mystery Science Theater 3000 last night, I was so utterly exhausted that I didn't even realize that the idea behind the clip was that he was holding a stack of waffles - so I was suddenly infused with a desire to make square pancakes.

When I came downstairs this morning, I realized that I had no idea how I might go about making square pancakes. Qualifications thus in place, I started searching for something non-flammable that might be able to act as a template.


Ah, this'll do.


After washing the lid off, the theory was simple - it's the same dropped scone mixture as normal, only poured into a well-oiled flour tin lid on top of the normal griddle.


Turning it over, however, is a tricky manoeuvre - and one that I realized I hadn't planned sufficiently for when it was time to turn the newly appointed pancake-basket over. In the end, I did it by using a spatula to sort of catapult it over, with a pair of tongs to anchor one side in place. Getting the pancake out of its case is a bit more difficult, requiring the use of an oven glove and the induction of a hand spasm.


And there they are. I admit the bottom one went a bit strange, but there's an odd novelty to them (they look rather like French toast).

It was an enjoyable experiment, and the way that the pancake is restricted in sideways growth meant that it produced some fluffy, beautifully risen end results, but the process is a bit of a hassle - you have to rely on intuition as to when to turn them, because you can't see the bottom of the pancake, and the time taken in bashing them out during the upending process means that they're a little more well-fired than I would ideally like. And you have to clean the template out and re-oil it between each one to make sure separation is... possible, so overall it's a bit more trouble than pancakes are really worth to remain appealing.

If it were just a square metal band, though...