Photo courtesy H-E-B
Encina’s blue corn butterscotch pancake mix ranked third in the H-E-B’s Quest for Texas Best contest, an annual competition highlighting the best Texas-made goods produced by small businesses.
The blue corn pancakes are one of the restaurant’s most popular items, and they sold over 13,000 of the packaged mix in one month last year around the holidays, owner Matt Balke said.
“It was really random,” Balke said of the origin of the pancakes. “We took my grandmother’s recipe for her cornbread when we opened and we were doing this blue cornmeal cornbread with whipped feta and sorghum butter, and decided this has potential for a pancake.”
The team took 11 shots at the pancakes, trying out flavors and toppings such as peanut butter chips, choco-
late chips, white chocolate, blueberries, bananas, apricots and more. Balke’s favorite sweet treat is butterscotch,
and adding that to the mix was an “aha” moment.
“On the 11th try, we added the butterscotch and salted caramel and a goat’s milk caramel that we make,” Balke said. “We all sat around, ate the pancakes, and were like ‘holy shit, this is it.’”
In addition to a $10,000 cash prize, the selection means Encina will have a chance to see its product on H-E-B shelves across the state.
The Dallas region accounted for half of the 10 finalists in the contest, with five local businesses making the shortlist for Texas’ best. The other finalists included BeeKing’s honey dust, natural sports drinks from HydroNation, Marasi Food’s frozen filled naan bread, and chamoy candy from Sarape Treats.
This was the 11th edition of the Quest for Texas Best contest from H-E-B. According to a news release, this year’s competition evaluated submissions from 470 entrepreneurs and from more than 100 cities in Texas.
The $25,000 grand prize went to Birria Queen from Austin, which created birria seasoning bombs,
