Strip performer shares his creative griddle techniques in book

For nearly 30 years, Michael Goudeau has displayed his creative talents as a comic juggler in such Las Vegas shows as "Folies Bergere," "Jubilee!" and Lance Burton's magic show.

But it turns out that Goudeau is pretty creative in the kitchen, too: He can juggle pancake ingredients -- batter, jelly, powdered sugar -- and turn them into something decidedly different.

A pancake re-creation of Edvard Munch's "The Scream," for instance. A griddlecake homage to Kiefer Sutherland's character in the TV series "24" that Goudeau calls -- you just new this was coming -- "FlapJack Bauer." Three-dimensional pigs and Christmas trees, too, and even a startlingly detailed, pancakey re-creation of a taco plate.

Now, Goudeau has written a book, "Extreme Pancakes: 23 Pancake Masterpieces Worth Waking Up For" (Sterling, $12.95) in which he shares techniques that can be used in making America's classic breakfast entree a bit more fun.

Goudeau's discovery of pancake art grew out of a desire to have a bit of fun with an early-morning staple and entertain his kids.

"You probably noticed when you saw the show, but I don't work a lot," Goudeau jokes. "I do a show 15 minutes a night, know what I mean? So I'm always looking for something fun to do.

"Then, I started out making pancakes for my kids when they were really young, and just on a whim I decided to try to make them in their initials. Anytime you give kids pancakes with their initials -- a big old 'J' for my son, Joey, and an 'E' for Emily -- they're really excited about it."

Goudeau thought it'd also be cool to create a train pancake for his son, but found that the usual ways of applying batter to griddle were too imprecise. Then, he happened upon using a batter-filled plastic ketchup dispenser to create designs.

That, Goudeau says, was "dumb luck" discovery No. 1. Dumb luck discovery No. 2 came when he drew the wheels of the train on the hot griddle first, "but I noticed that when flipped it over, the parts that were on the grill longer were darker. So, I kind of figured out I could draw stuff inside of a pancake."

Goudeau's discovery meant that he could vary the colors on a single pancake just by putting the parts of the design that he wanted to be darker -- the smile and eyes on a smiley face, for instance -- onto the griddle first. Then, he could add more batter onto the design to create successively lighter areas.

As he experimented, Goudeau learned a few more pancake art techniques. He learned that letters have to be written backward on the griddle so they'd appear right-side up when the pancake is served. He learned that, contrary to pancake experts' advice, using a mixer to beat the pancake batter created a smoother batter that is good for making designs.

Then, "I went nuts with it," Goudeau says. He figured out how to build three-dimensional designs, such as a pig he made "by making five or six pancakes and poking a hole through the middle of them."

He created a standing-up snail pancake that he jazzed up with a syrup "slime" trail extending onto the table.

He began to experiment with food coloring and ingredients that would give his mostly monochromatic cakes a bit of color. "The taco platter was the first one with colors," he says, using food coloring to make the lettuce, the tomatoes and the tacos. He made pancake asterisks of successively smaller size, stacked them to create a Christmas tree, and used powdered sugar to create snow.

Goudeau started a blog, "The Pancake Project," (http://thepancakeproject.blogspot.com) to share his creations and seek out other pancake artists' work. Actress Felicia Day "stumbled onto it and put it on her Twitter account, and she has like a million and a half people," Goudeau says. "I put this thing up and two weeks later, 40,000 people had been by to see it."

About four months ago, "Extreme Pancakes" went on sale through Barnes & Noble's online bookstore. The book, Goudeau notes, actually is a pancake art kit that includes a batter dispenser and a template for creating backward letters.

Now, Goudeau continues to explore the batter boundaries of pancake art with whimsy and, in a few cases, a definite sense of the bizarre.

As to the former: His "pigs in a blanket" tribute, which features pancake pigs peeking out from underneath a pancake blanket. And as to the latter: His "Leggo my Eggo" piece, featuring a bloody pancake hand -- blood effect supplied by strawberry jam -- clutching a waffle.

Yet, Goudeau maintains modestly that he doesn't consider himself an artist who just happens to work in the medium of pancakes. Rather, Goudeau says the most important attribute he brings to his stovetop canvas is tenacity.

"I'm willing to take a few tries at it," he says. "I'll spend an hour making a pancake if that's what it takes. The only problem is, it's ridiculously messy, by the time I have five or six colors (of batter) in different bottles."

His kids -- Emily is now 10 and Joseph is 12 -- still love it and, Goudeau says, "do it themselves."

And the ideas keep coming, even if Goudeau doesn't necessarily always know immediately how to execute them.

"I've been trying to figure out how to do one that you'd serve to a zombie, so it'd look like you're pulling someone's head open and eating a pancake brain, and I don't have the solution for it yet," he says.

The challenges are not only structural but culinary: Goudeau insists that his designs still be tasty.

"For some reason, I really wanted to do a pirate ship, with a mast and sail and stuff," he says. "But by the time it was cooked enough to be sturdy enough, it wasn't worth eating, and I kind of like to make them and serve them at breakfast."

But, for Goudeau, the best part of all of this is that crafting pancakes into art is a great family activity.

"People say they do it with their kids, which is exactly what I wanted," he says. "It couldn't make me happier to find out people are doing it with their kids. And some of the kids have become obsessed and make their parents crazy.

"Really, the book was about the techniques more than making copies of my pancakes. I teach them how to make each of the 20-whatever pancakes, but my hope is just that they go, 'I can make this ...' "

Finally, the question must be asked: Can Goudeau -- who has juggled some pretty bizarre stuff over the years -- juggle pancakes?

"Of course," he answers. "But, know what? They juggle vertically."

Pancake tips

Goudeau uses a basic batter -- a recipe from Cook's Illustrated -- for his creations, although he does have a few favorite pancake recipes he uses when not creating art.

"Teller of Penn and Teller gave me a recipe for a lemon ricotta pancake, which is just fantastically delicious. I don't even put syrup on it. I just put a little butter on it."

However, Goudeau also has used a pumpkin pancake butter to make a jack-o'-lantern, and "once I did an ear of corn out of corn pancake batter. So, it's kind of neat to (do) the flavor matching."

But pancake batter is to a cook what a blank canvas is to a painter, and pancake preferences are just as individual as preferences in art.

"I love buttermilk pancakes," says Christopher Lindsay, corporate executive chef at Creative Cooking School of Las Vegas. One of his favorite batters incorporates all-purpose flour, yellow cornmeal, brown sugar, buttermilk and yogurt.

Lindsay also does a pineapple upside-down pancake -- it's baked and then dropped onto a hot flattop -- and he's been working on a pancake that features an encapsulated center of maple syrup, honey butter and bacon fat.

Whatever the pancake, Lindsay recommends beginning with a pan or griddle that's lubricated with a fat -- clarified butter is good -- and then wiped off. Then, put the batter onto the hot surface with a pancake gun, ladle or pitcher.

Look for the rising bake as the batter comes up around the sides of the cake. "What I look for is that bottom edge which has contact with the surface that has started to creep up the side a little as it's becoming a little more well-done," he says.

"I slide a spatula under and give it a little bend. If it's loose or watery, give it a few more seconds. And my pet peeve is people flipping pancakes. When you do flip, don't do it violently. Do it quickly but with finesse."

How to know when it's done? Look for a soft-sponge sort of texture, "so when you take the spatula and push down gently on the top of the pancake, it should spring back up immediately," Lindsay says.

When adding ingredients such as blueberries, Lindsay prefers adding the berries into the pancake by hand as the batter begins to set.

"I don't put anything into the batter," he says. "There's nothing wrong with that, but I like definition and I like to have the cleanness of the pancake, and when you beat the blueberries into the pancake, they end up breaking.

"If you're going to make something like chocolate chip (pancakes) or something that has a melting point, you want to make sure when you put the batter down that you push down the chocolate and that it does recess below the batter line. If you don't, it ends up burning."

BEST BANANA BREAD PANCAKES

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour (see note)

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

¼ cup brown sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

2/3 cup milk

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

3 large ripe bananas, mashed

2 tablespoons butter, melted

Vanilla maple glaze (recipe follows)

Combine flours, baking powder, sugar, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg in a large bowl. Measure out the milk and add the vanilla extract to it. Whisk together the dry ingredients and add in milk and vanilla, stirring to combine. The mixture will still be dry. Add in mashed bananas and mix. Add in melted butter and stir until batter is somewhat smooth.

Heat a skillet or grill on medium heat. Using a 1/3 cup measure, spoon batter into rounds and cook until bubbles form on top (2 to 3 minutes). Flip and cook for a minute or two more. Repeat with remaining batter. Serve hot with butter and syrup or vanilla maple glaze.

Note: If you don't have or can't find whole wheat pastry flour, use 1 cup of regular whole wheat flour and 1 cup of all-purpose flour, or 2 cups of all-purpose flour.

Vanilla maple glaze:

½ cup maple syrup

¾ cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 teaspoons Frangelico (optional)

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir until smooth. Pour over pancakes.

-- Recipe from Creative Cooking School of Las Vegas

MICHAEL GOUDEAU'S FAVORITE

BASIC PANCAKE RECIPE

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 cups milk

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 large egg

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

Whisk the lemon juice into the milk and set aside to thicken while you mess with the other stuff. You can use buttermilk instead of this mixture. (You're putting the lemon juice into the milk to thicken it up a little and to add some tang.)

 Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a big bowl and mix it up. Take about ¼ cup of this dry mix out of the bowl and save it on the side. You might need to add some to the batter until it is the right consistency.

 Whisk the egg and melted butter into the lemony milk. Pour this into the middle of your big bowl of dry ingredients. Mix this up with a hand electric mixer until it is lump free (lumps can injure your pancake art).

At this point you're ready to hit the griddle and create your own pancake art.

-- Recipe from "The New Best Recipe" by the editors of Cook's Illustrated

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.