sunday morning pancakes

Around our fifth date my future spouse declared Sunday pancakes a tradition. What’s more, I would be the one making them. I’ve made thousands of pancakes since.

Pancakes are an extremely simple dish, from ingredients to recipe to serving. This makes them elegant, delicious (like any good cocktail), easy to make, and as you’d expect, exceedingly difficult to master.

Over time I’ve experimented and failed my way to a pretty great pancake recipe based on one taken from America’s Test Kitchen. They are spongy and light, with a melty inside. Although it has nothing to do with financial infrastructure, I’m going to post it anyway, because gosh darnint, this is my website and its nice to have this here for reference.

Core Recipe - Serves Four

Dry

  • 2 cups Flour
  • 2 tbs Sugar
  • 2 tsp Baking Powder
  • 0.5 tsp Baking Soda
  • 1 tsp Salt

Wet

  • 2.25 cups Buttermilk (essential)
  • 3 tbs Melted Butter
  • 2 tsp Vanilla
  • 1 large Egg
  1. Melt butter, let cool.
  2. Mix dry ingredients in big bowl.
  3. Mix wet ingredients including melted butter in smaller bowl (pre-whisk egg)
  4. Slowly stir the wet into dry, until just combined. You want there to be big lumps. DO NOT OVERMIX. You want a slightly watery mixture. Too little liquid, and you’ll have pancakes that are overly fluffy in my opinion.
  5. Let batter sit for a minute. The longer you sit, the fluffier the pancake. Waiting more than three minutes is generally bad as the batter overtaxes.
  6. Use either butter or cooking oil spray to coat your pan / skillet. Wait for the griddle to get hot, ladle in a dollop of batter, then cook until you see a fair amount of little bubbles on the burgeoning pancake. Flip, cook a little bit longer than serve.

Please note the first pancake is always the worst. I recommend making a small test pancake to begin with - animals love ‘em.

Variations

If its not a powder or liquid, adding something to your batter is invariably going to result in a lower quality pancake. Instead offer your potential mixer in a bowl as a topping! The only exception to this rule is finely chopped macadamia nuts.

Suggested toppings include:

  • Real Maple Syrup (lower grades are more flavorful, which I prefer)
  • Fruit (peaches, blueberries, strawberries, banana, mango)
  • Toasted candied coconut shavings
  • Compote

If you must spice it up I’ve found the following batter mixers to be great (vary amount by taste, usually 1tsp or more is needed):

  • Cinnamon
  • Nutmeg
  • Lemon juice, zest (orange can also work)
  • Mascarpone
  • Allspice

Enjoy!