Pancakes

It totally tastes as good as it looks...possibly better.

There’s nothing better than breakfast on the weekend.  Something about waking up late and having a leisurely cup of morning joe always puts me in the mood for a good meal.  I’m a big fan of looking at finished food, and there are few things more satisfying than the visage of pancakes, bacon, and eggs, glistening in the yellow-blue light of late morning.

I’m a Vermont girl, so no pancake meal is complete without a generous serving of maple syrup.  Though I live in LA, I’m fortunate enough to have a dad who makes his own syrup and always brings me some when he visits.  If you’re not so lucky, you’ll probably need to buy your syrup from far away.  Everything else in this recipe can be found locally, so don’t fret.  Just be sure to buy the real stuff, which is high in potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc and iron.  Imitation is nothing more than chemically flavored high fructose corn syrup.  Yuck.

I’m obviously very taken with syrup, and as such I’ve made my pancake recipe light on the sugar so the maple syrup can really shine.  Plus, I adore a set of over-easy eggs that I can break open and sop up with the bread-y, syrupy pancake.  Throw in some bacon and you’ve got the ultimate weekend meal—sweet, savory, and rich!

This recipe is so simple you won’t believe how good it is.

Ingredients (as always, buy local if you can):

1 egg

3/4 cup (2% or higher milk fat) organic milk

2 TBSP vegetable oil

1 cup all purpose flour

1 TBSP sugar

1 TBSP baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp vanilla

1 TBSP butter

(Know your around the kitchen? Click here to cut to the chase.)

Stir all of your dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl.  In another bowl, wisk together your wet ingredients until they are fully mixed (leave out the butter, that’s for greasing the pan!)  Make an indent in your dry ingredients, and pour the wet ingredients into the middle.  With as few strokes as possible, stir the batter together.  You don’t want to over work it (avoid a mixer like the plague) as stirring forms gluten bonds in the flour.  Stirring until there are no lumps will render your pancakes tough.  Stirring until the wet and dry are just incorporated (but still a bit lumpy) is perfect.

Heat a cast iron skillet (or your trusty Cuisinart Green Gourmet sauté pan) on high with 1 TBSP of butter in the bottom.  Swirl the pan so that the butter evenly covers the surface.  Use a 1/4 measuring cup to ladle 4 scoops of batter into the pan (leave enough space in between for the pancakes to double in size as they cook.)

Once the pancakes are in the pan, turn down your heat to medium high and keep an eye on them—when they start to bubble enough that they bubbles break (they’ll start to bubble lightly before they are actually ready so don’t be fooled…) go ahead and get your spatula under them.  The edges will usually look slightly dry when they’re ready as well.  If they look nicely browned on the bottom, go ahead and flip them over.  Sometimes you just have to flip one to see if it’s ready.  If it’s not, no worries—it will still be edible, just not browned nicely, and now you know what you were looking at before the flip was not enough bubbling!  Give the rest a little more time, and flip them when they are ready.  You’ll get the hang of it.

It only takes a minute or so to brown the other side of the pancake, as most of the cooking is done before the flip.  If you want to make the whole batch before serving, line a pan with wax paper, and lay your pancakes on top.  Cover loosely with a damp paper towel and put in a warm toaster oven until you’ve finished the rest (a regular oven will due as well.)  Don’t leave them hanging for more than 10 minutes or so though, or they’ll dry out!

I serve my pancakes with over-easy eggs and bacon (sunny-side for my boyfriend, Jeremy!)  Bacon will take the longest, so I like to cook it first and set it aside.  When you put the pancakes in the oven to keep them warm, throw the cooked bacon in with it and it’ll be the perfect temperature when you’re ready to eat.  I use the same pan for everything, so once I’ve cooked the bacon, I drain the grease (not down the drain unless you love paying plumbers to come out and unclog them…use a jar and you can use the fat again later, or just throw it out when it’s full.)  Wipe out the pan, cook the pancakes, set them aside, then cook the eggs.  While my eggs are cooking I’ll warm up the maple syrup on the stove so it’s warm (but not hot) when I’m finally ready to sit down.  Want to go more local?  Fresh seasonal jams are great on pancakes, as is honey, which is available locally pretty much everywhere food is grown.

These pancakes are simple, can be made with things most cooks will have lying around, and are crowd pleasers!

Serves 2-3, depending on how hungry you are!

I know what I’m doing, just give me the quick and dirty!

Combine your dry ingredients and wet ingredients in separate bowls.  Add the wet to the dry, and stir in as few strokes as possible to combine the two.  Ladle 1/4 cup servings into a hot greased pan.  When bubbly and browned on the bottom, flip and quickly cook the other side.  Serve with bacon and eggs, and of course, maple syrup!  Want to go more local?  Fresh seasonal jams are great on pancakes, as is honey which is available locally pretty much everywhere food is grown.