BBC Website WTF



  •  Spotted by a mate at work:BBC-WTF



  •  Wow, that really is a WTF.  You shouldn't be using water in pancake batter!



  •  And what's with the oil?

    And whoever wrote it obviously hasn't got kids, there's no way you can let it stand for 30 minutes. They want them NOW!

     

    Anyway, who needs a recipe for pancakes? Get some flour, a pinch of salt, add some eggs (I usually use one egg for 2 very heaped dessert spoons of flour) and then milk, adjust proportions until it's the right creaminess. Then cook. The hard bit is the cooking (keeping the pan temperature right). It's quite hard to get the mixture very wrong, as long as you have the three main ingredients in it. (but no water, who puts water in pancakes?)

    Any parent who doesn't teach their kids how to make pancakes, at least passingly well, wants shooting.

    (I can't understand why people buy 'pancake mix' from the supermarket. It's not like it's rocket science)



  • looks like joson to me.



  • That's a Perl variable dump from Data::Dumper. And BBC website uses Perl, so someone must've enabled debugging on a live site. Bad.



  • What's with the oil, indeed.  Every pancake batter recipe I've ever read or used has either butter or oil in it.  It helps keep the pancake from sticking, it makes for a better texture, and helps the flavor.  In fact, you can cut down on the amount of egg by using butter or oil.  If you're not putting in oil or butter, you're not making very good pancakes (or you're getting too much cholesterol from the eggs, or you like chiffon pancakes [whipped egg whites,etc.]).

    Putting water in pancake batter helps when you're using buckwheat flour or some other sort of flour that wants a little more moisture; you could add extra milk, but that adds extra fat and lactose that you might not want in the finished product.



  • @mrprogguy said:

    What's with the oil, indeed.  Every pancake batter recipe I've ever read or used has either butter or oil in it.  It helps keep the pancake from sticking, it makes for a better texture, and helps the flavor.  In fact, you can cut down on the amount of egg by using butter or oil.  If you're not putting in oil or butter, you're not making very good pancakes (or you're getting too much cholesterol from the eggs, or you like chiffon pancakes [whipped egg whites,etc.]).

     

    This is all well and good but normally you oil or butter the pan, not the batter.  Mixing oil into batter with cream and/or water, with few exceptions, will give you an emulsion, leaving you with an inconsistent texture and a more difficult job of cooking in general.



  • @Aaron said:

    Mixing oil into batter with cream and/or water, with few exceptions, will give you an emulsion, leaving you with an inconsistent texture and a more difficult job of cooking in general.

    Cream is an emulsion. The homogenisation process conceals this, but does not change it.

    The inconsistent texture comes from failure to properly combine the mixture. This is normally the case when some yahoo uses COLD ingredients to make baked goods. Equalise your temperatures to near-room, so you can get a reliable mixture. Don't go much above room, because the heat will tighten the egg proteins and give you... yep, inconsistent texture. Because you're inadvertently scrambling the eggs inside your recipe.

    When you have to add eggs to a warm mixture, start with a separate portion of that warm mixture and slowly pour it into the eggs while stirring briskly and constantly. The constant motion helps the temperatures equalise and prevents the eggs from scrambling... this is the only way to make authentic French pastry cream, and you can spot people who don't do it quite right because there are little brown specks in it. Those are scrambled eggs, because he tried to temper his eggs too quickly... or, worse, added the EGGS to the CREAM. Un non-non majeure.*

     * - I do not speak French and this phrase is intended to be silly, not significant. Much like the French people themselves.



  •  Never thought I'd learn so much about making pancakes on TDWTF. Thanks you guys.



  • The Daily WTF: Pancake Edition.

    @superjer said:

     Never thought I'd learn so much about making pancakes on TDWTF. Thanks you guys.

    agreed.


  • @Steeldragon said:

    @superjer said:
    Never thought I'd learn so much about making pancakes on TDWTF. Thanks you guys.
    agreed.
    WTF? That isn't why you joined?



  •  "BBC" is the initials of one of our clients that decided to save money by doing their own designs for their website (and we build it). So we got a number a CDs in the post each with one PSD, with layouts over 2500 pixels wide. I don't know what kinds of monitors they use but I'd like one!



  • I'm a bit concerned about the

    'glossary_link' => 's.shtml?salt'
    bit and similars.

    I can predict a server-side generated JavaScript code to focus the document fragment on load; unless they replace that '?' with a '#' somewhere.


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