Result and Evaluation

Result
Whilst the final two pancakes were chocolate sauce and caramel ice cream, which was somewhat predictable as soon as bacon went out, I feel like today has been a success as I have found some new pancake toppings that are slightly obscure, but have been proven to liked by more people than just myself, which was the aim of this project for me on a personal level, so I feel like it's been a success in that respect.

I asked my tasters some questions afterwards to see what they thought of the project. 

Q). Which was your personal favourite pancake?
A). Two said caramel ice cream, one said nutella and coconut, one said coconut, sugar and cinnamon.

Q). Which was your least favourite pancake?
A). Bacon and maple syrup, cheese, mint sauce, oranges and cream.

Q). Which pancake were you most pleasantly surprised with?
A). Two said butter and sugar, one said peach and meringue, one said ham and mushroom

Q). Which pancake were you most disappointed with?
A). Two said bacon and maple syrup, one said jam, the other said strawberries and cream.

Q). Out of all the pancakes you didn't eat, which one would you not want to eat?
A). Ham and mushroom, green tea, chilli and tomato, prawns.

Q). Out of all the pancake toppings you ate for the first time today, would you eat any again next time you ate pancakes. If so which one?
A). Two said no, one said butter and sugar, the other said bacon and maple syrup. When I asked the two that said no why they wouldn't they both said that they just preferred the more traditional toppings.

I see this as a success, as one of my tasters said their favourite pancake was coconut, sugar and cinnamon, one of my less conventional toppings. Not only this, but there was a range of most pleasantly surprising pancakes, which shows that there were a few obscure toppings that were really nice. The same could be said for the most disappointing pancakes however, which is slightly disappointing in itself. The range of the answers for the least favourite is pretty broad, and I think that reflects the fact that not everyone ate the worse pancake toppings, which was the idea. The ones that people wouldn't have wanted to eat are pretty understandable, and the answers to other questions don't contradict this. The thing I'm most pleased with however, is that two of them said they'd choose to eat some of the pancakes again. Which to me shows a pretty high degree of success in the project, especially since those two were ones that came form my initial first hand research.

Evaluation
Initially I said I wanted to find out which world cup country had the cuisine for the best pancake topping. The results show that Belgium, Argentina and Colombia are the top three, but there are so many other good choices that I don't feel that the strength of my project came in the conclusion, but more the process of reaching the conclusion. 

The fact that you had to choose one topping over another meant that you had to try both to know for sure that one was better than the other. If you'd told me beforehand that I could choose to have an Italian based topping or a Bosnian based topping, I'd have chosen the Italian one all day long out of a lack of adventurousness on my part. This method avoided this, and hence I found nice obscure toppings from Colombia, Nigeria, Bosnia and Portugal that I wouldn't have otherwise. I wonder how many people in the UK have ever had grapefruit on a pancake, or grapes with pepper.

I really enjoyed this project, which was stressed to be important when we were briefed, which gives me encouragement, because looking back, really, what I've gathered are opinions rather than facts, which isn't really what I associate with research. But in all honesty I think you could have left me for another decade before I came up with an idea that was more appropriate to me and that I'd enjoy doing as much, so I'm happy.

What Next
From here onwards I will think about my presentation, which I feel will need to highlight the successes in my project rather than "expose" the lack of hard facts gained from it. Before this I also want to put together a few surveys about pancakes generally to try and gain a bigger understanding about them and where they stand in Britain's food culture today.