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
