Every Thursday morning, my mother would make us pancakes for breakfast before school. This weekly meal fueled my life-long appetite for pancakes. Or perhaps it was her recognition of such.
In any case, whenever I had the opportunity at a restaurant, I would seldom pass up the opportunity for a fluffy, flour, milk, and egg-based excuse for maple syrup. Other people could never quite capture the way she made hers, though, and the difference lay in that one word: fluffy.
Dad's efforts would more closely resemble the traditional, fluffy variety. Mom's version more closely resembled a really dense crepe. I didn't necessarily prefer one variety of the other. Like I said, it's all about the maple syrup :-)
This weekend, I was curious to discover where the difference lay. Yesterday I made the standard pancakes as per The Joy of Cooking. This morning I dug out Mom's recipe and gave it a go. The key was a much smaller proportion of baking powder: 1 and 3/4 Tablespoons (TJOC) versus 2 teaspoons (Mom's). Given that baking powder is a leavening agent, this now makes sense.
For mainly my sister's benefit, below is the recipe for Mom's pancakes:
Pancakes
Add wet to dry
Beat together in 4c pyrex measuring cup:
1.5 C milk
2 eggs
1 T oil
1 t white sugar
Sift together in large bowl:
1.5 C flour
2 t baking powder
0.5 t salt
Turn when bubbles pop
:)
ReplyDeleteI love your blog. This post inspired me to make pancakes for breakfast this morning. Here's my recipe--I came up with this myself.
ReplyDeletesift:
3/4 c whole wheat flour
3/4 c white flour
1/2 t salt
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
in a saucepan, gently melt:
2 T honey
mix 1 1/2 c milk with 1 1/2 T white vinegar to make buttermilk
add 1/2 the buttermilk to the melted honey and warm it slightly so the honey dissolves
meanwhile, whisk:
1 egg
1/3 c of yogurt (any flavour)
1 t vanilla
the cold half of the buttermilk
then add the warm milk to the rest of the liquid and stir it in
add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients 1/3 at a time, and stir until just mixed
add 1/2 c of your favourite fruit--blueberries work well
for lower fat, use just the egg white
for higher protein, substitute cottage cheese for the yogurt--trust me, it still tastes awesome!
cook and enjoy!