This is going to be a better late than never French Fridays with Dorie post. Matafan (or mashed potato pancakes) was actually our assigned recipe for the first week of December, but since I was not doing much cooking that week I am only now squeezing it in.

The Matafan recipe got mixed reviews from my fellow FFwD cooks and I enjoyed one of the benefits of being late, in that I was also able to pick up quite a few tips & suggestions from reading their posts. The most common complaint seemed to be that the pancakes were a bit bland and could use a little something to pep them up a bit. Suggestions abounded and I decided to take advantage of several of them see what we liked best.

From what I understand, matafan is originally a dish intended to use up leftover mashed potatoes. Which is a great idea, but I guess it is probably a bit difficult to write a recipe for since we all use different amounts of milk and butter in our mashed potatoes. Thus Dorie’s recipe starts out with instructions for what would probably be somewhat dry mashed potatoes, and then builds them into batter for light and fluffy pancakes.

I served these pancakes for Sunday breakfast. My first batch of pancakes followed Dorie’s instructions to the letter and we ate them topped with a little butter and maple syrup. Tasty.

Next, I threw some minced onions into the batter and made a few different toppings. I topped my pancakes with creme fraiche and my husband added lox to his. Very tasty!

And finally, I added a little grated gruyère cheese to the batter and topped my pancake with a nice runny friend egg. Very VERY tasty!

Final verdict? These were great! But I do have to agree with a few of my fellow FFwD cooks that they are rather time-consuming for pancakes. Would I serve these again as simple breakfast pancakes with maple syrup? Probably not, because my standard pancake recipe is a heck of a lot quicker. Would I serve these again with a little onion, cheese, and a runny egg? Not sure yet. But I can say that these were delicious enough that I want to try to figure out if I can make them with my standard mashed potatoes. If so, I see many of these in my future.