Saveur x Of a Kind: Helen Rosner & Gabriella Gershenson Dive Into the Of a Kind Cookbook

Listen, our beat is fashion, not food. But since our designers love to cook, and we love to eat, we decided to put together a little PDF cookbook (that you can get for freezies just by signing up for our newsletter). We feel damn good about the result—especially considering peeps with real chops are giving it a kitchen workout. Behold: Helen Rosner (editor of Saveur.com) and Gabriella Gershenson (Saveur senior editor) whip up Annie Larson’s delicious-looking pancakes.

THEIR TAKE:

Here’s the truth: this was not the best looking dinner we’ve ever made. But we didn’t pick these sour cream pancakes for their beauty, we picked them for other reasons: their homey, comforting flavor, their ease of assembly, their unimpeachable gastronomic affinity for a side of bacon and maybe also a side of sausage and, okay, maybe a fried egg or two (and lots of maple syrup).

This recipe, Edna Mae’s Sour Cream Pancakes, turns out to have something of a serious internet pedigree. ALL Knitwear designer Annie Larson tells Of a Kind that she borrowed the recipe from Wiksten designer Jenny Gordy; we’re pretty sure Jenny got it by way of Deb at Smitten Kitchen, who herself adapted it from The Pioneer Woman, who was responsible for picking it up from its primary source: her mother-in-law, Edna Mae herself. We decided to keep the chain going, and made our own slight adaptation: Where everyone from Edna Mae on down calls for vanilla extract, we went with a teaspoon of vanilla powder—fine-grained vanilla seeds that look like coffee grounds, have a cleaner, more subtle vanilla flavor, and have the additional (and, as we quickly realized, not quite desirable) effect of turning the pancake batter a muddy yellow-gray-brown.

Unattractive as the batter may have been, once it hit the griddle (copiously greased with high-fat European-style butter), the kitchen filled with the smell of pancakes. Ten minutes earlier we’d put a rasher of Edward’s of Surrey, Virginia bacon in the oven to crisp (unable to choose between the many delicious varieties, we settled on peppered smoked bacon and cinnamon apple cured bacon, both delicious); five minutes after that we started their coarse-ground pork sausage patties in the skillet. It all finished at exactly the same time, and while we let the bacon cool enough to handle, we cracked a few eggs into the sausage-fat–coated skillet and fried them up. Dinner was served: salty bacon, savory sausage, runny egg yolks, and these ugly, exquisite, buttery pancakes drenched in maple syrup. We ate every bite. As dinners go, it was the best breakfast ever. —helen and gabriella

MAKE ‘EM YOURSELF: Edna Mae’s Sour Cream Pancakes by Annie Larson of ALL Knitwear

Ingredients:
7 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
½ teaspooon vanilla
Butter
Maple syrup, powdered sugar, and/or whatever else you like for toppings

Directions:
Stir together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Add the sour cream, stir in gently. It’s okay if the texture is a little lumpy. Whisk together the eggs and vanilla in another medium bowl and stir in the sour cream mixture until just combined. Melt the butter in skillet over medium heat and pour batter ¼ cup of batter onto the skillet. Cook 2 minutes on first side or until bubbles appear on surface. Flip carefully, cooking for one more minute on the other side. Makes approximately 10 pancakes.