Saturday Share: Pancakes

If you haven't done much cooking before, now is your chance to see how quick and easy it can be. In fact, get the kids and spouse involved too.

Absolutely support your favorite restaurants during this self-quarantine period by ordering out once in a while, but prepare most of your meals in your kitchen. Less risk of exposure to COVID and less money spent.

Pancakes Please

When our kids were little, I'd make little 2-inch pancakes that I called silver dollar pancakes. The kids loved them.

Pancakes are the kind of Saturday morning breakfast most people love. Guess what? They're easy to make, and, made from scratch, they're delicious.

Many people think fast and easy means ordering take-out or getting fast food, but think about the time involved in driving to pick up food and getting it home to eat.

Compare that to walking into your kitchen and having a meal ready to eat in 15-20 minutes depending on what you cook.

Pancakes take less than 10 minutes to mix up and about 10 minutes to cook the whole batch. You can serve pancakes with butter and maple syrup or upgrade them with fresh fruits, fruit syrups, or jams.

Dust with powdered sugar and add whipped cream if you really want to doll them up. Of course, that adds a lot of calories.

Pancakes with a little syrup aren't that high in calories. The best thing about pancakes is you can serve them sweet or savory—for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

If you happen to have flour, or can score some at the grocery store, you can make these within minutes.

I'll give directions for using self-rising flour and for all-purpose flour depending on what you may have.

Plain, or all-purpose, flour is coarser than self-rising flour, which has been milled finger.

(Self-rising flour, invented by Henry Jones and patented in 1845, could be said to be the first convenience food.)

I'll also give directions for making them with regular milk and with buttermilk which produces the absolute lightest, best pancakes ever.

(I keep buttermilk in the fridge just to make pancakes.)

This recipe makes about 9 four-inch pancakes.

Regular Milk / All-Purpose Flour Version

I use organic flour that I buy at Costco. I sift the flour then measure the 1 cup. It gives a lighter pancake, but you don't have to sift if you don't want to.

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup of regular milk
• 1 cup all-purpose flour (sometimes called plain flour)
• 3 teaspoons baking powder

Directions

1. Crack the egg into a bowl and whisk briskly until it's fluffy and lighter in color.
2. Add oil, sugar, and salt, and mix well.
3. Add milk and mix well.
4. In a separate bowl, blend the flour and baking powder together.
5. Incorporate the flour mixture into the liquid, mixing well. There should be no lumps.
6. Heat a griddle to 255-265 degrees F. If you don't have a griddle, use a large flat-bottomed skillet or frying pan. If what you use is not a non-stick pan, use a pastry brush dipped in a little vegetable oil to grease it.
7. Pour batter into 3-4 inch rounds. The batter will expand to a slightly larger pancake so don't pour them too close together.
8. The trick to perfect pancakes is to turn them only once. The way to achieve this is to make sure the griddle is hot before pouring the first one.
9. Then watch them cook. You'll see steam rising from them and bubbles appear on the top surface.
10. After about 2-3 minutes, gently lift the edge with a spatula to see if they're browned. If they are, flip them over and cook for the same amount of time as it took for the first side.

Regular Milk / Self-Rising Flour Version

This is easy because self-rising flour is nothing but all-purpose flour with salt and baking powder already added.

As previously mentioned, Henry Jones, a baker in Bristol, England, invented self-raising flour, but British self-rising flour differs from American self-rising. The British version has a lot more baking powder in it, and many people can taste the baking powder which is off-putting. American baking powder has just a small amount that can't be distinguished by taste.

Use the same amount of flour, but eliminate the salt and baking powder.

Buttermilk Pancakes / All-Purpose Flour Version

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup of buttermilk
• 1 cup all-purpose flour (sometimes called plain flour)
• 1 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Directions:

Follow the same directions as given the first time. You'll add the baking powder and baking soda to the flour and mix well. Cook as directed. The reason these are lighter and fluffier is that buttermilk and baking soda together create a chemical reaction to produce gas that makes these pancakes rise more than the plain milk version.

Buttermilk Pancakes  / Self-Rising Flour Version

This is also easy. Use the same amount of flour, but eliminate the salt and baking powder, but you'll add 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda.

Serve pancakes with your favorite fruit or pure maple syrup. Heat the syrup in the microwave for 15 seconds, and it makes the pancakes even more scrumptious.

Takeaway Truth

Cooking at home is a way of spending time with the family and educating your children about nutrition and teaching them to cook.

When you cook, you control the ingredients instead of serving something that has a ton of unpronounceable food additives. The food tastes better too!