BURNT OFFERINGS

 Sunday morn and time for some yummy pumpkin pancakes, I thought. Okay, no big deal... just follow the directions for my first use of my new griddle on my new range.
I knew that this ceramic top cooks much hotter than my old, scaggy electric but good grief! I used my "bridge element" which is stove speak for cooking with both the front and back burner along with a center "bridge" so you get a continuous area of heat. Oh yeah, did I ever! It didn't help that I was using a pumpkin pancake mix from Trader's with more sugar in it than plain old Bisquick. The first batch burned quickly, even though I had turned down the burners from a "7" to a "5" (as recommended in the manual) as soon as I put the batter on the griddle. Seems like I can't use the Frigidaire manual for this...way too hot! So I tossed the gooey, burnt cakes into the trash and started over...using a "5" for heating and turning it down to a "3." Better result but still darker than I wanted and maybe not quite all the way cooked in the middle.  "Good but not great," as Julia Child would say.  

So we ate 'em anyway, along with some homemade applesauce and some Taylor's sausage. Gee, at least the plate warming drawer worked very well!