Recipe of the Week: perfect pancakes

Few things in life make me happier than a lazy Sunday morning. Except maybe a lazy Sunday morning where I wake up, make a cup of coffee, and make breakfast for Mr. B. Yes, I sound like a 50s housewife, and I don’t care! I love cooking for people and breakfast happens to be one of my favorite things to make. So, for this week’s recipe, I give you my yummy buttermilk pancakes. And for my non-US readers, I’ve attempted to give you the ingredients in metric as well- I’m not sure how perfectly everything converted so let me know if there are any mistakes!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 1 cup (125 g) flour
• 1 tablespoon (12.5 g) sugar
• 1 teaspoon (5 g) baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon (1.25 g) baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon (1.25 g) salt
• 1 beaten egg (large)
• 1 cup (240 ml) buttermilk or sour milk*
• 2 tablespoons (30 ml) cooking oil
• Butter, maple syrup, jam… whatever you want on your pancakes!

* If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, you can make sour milk. For each cup of sour milk needed, put 1 tablespoon of lemon juice in a glass measuring cup. Add milk to one cup line, and stir. Let sit five minutes before using.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Combine all dry ingredients into a medium bowl and make a well in the center, set aside.

2. In a separate bowl or glass measuring cup, add the milk, egg and oil and stir to beat the egg.

3. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients all at once and stir just until moistened- there should be lumps in the batter! If it is way too thick, you can add a bit more milk.

4. Set your batter aside, and heat a heavy pan or a griddle. If you have a griddle, I’m totally jealous… just sayin’. But my cast iron skillet does the job just fine! Once your pan is hot and your batter has “rested” a bit, you are set to go! Resting your batter allows air bubbles to build, and gives you fluffier cakes.

5. I ALWAYS do a test pancake. It might seem silly, but I’d rather waste a tiny bit of batter on one pancake than realize my pan wasn’t hot enough or too hot when loaded with three or four! This time, the pan was perfectly hot:

6. Then, just add as many pancakes as your pan allows, giving them room to expand. Then, just wait! You will know they are ready to flip when you can see the edges start to lift from the pan a bit and bubbles rise to the top surface:

7. Then, carefully flip each cake and cook on the other side. Remember, the second side won’t need nearly as much time to cook, so watch them closely!

8. Just keep making your cakes until all of your batter is used! And have fun with it- we’ve done initials, Mickey Mouse, you name it! But, so you know, a single batch of batter will yield about eight 4-inch pancakes. I would definitely double or triple the batter if you are cooking for a big crowd- a single batch is perfect for two hungry adults!

Salut! P.S. did you notice the syrup drip on the far right side? I was pretty proud of that- B just laughed at me!