I’ve had a whirlwind of homework and commitments the past few weeks, and I’m leaving Boston for the fourth weekend in a row tonight. On top of that, one of the core readings of the semester is due on Monday for my Foundations class, and it’s 88 pages of dense text. So, you’d think this morning when I don’t have class, I should be reading. Well, you’d be correct. Instead, though, I worked a little on my job as UEP website manager, and spent more than an hour on a fun project:
Being new to this whole cooking-for-myself thing, I realized that I didn’t know off the top of my head the ingredients for pancakes. So I browsed the internet, writing down simple pancake recipes from the top three or four pages of the Google search result. I put the results into an Excel spreadsheet (as I love to do) and crunched numbers to come up with a educated average. Here’s what I came up with:
- 1 cup flour
- 1 cup milk
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1.5 tablespoons melted butter
- 1 tablespoon sugar (or honey, in my case)
How’d they turn out? Fluffy! I will probably cut the baking powder in half next time, or drop it entirely. Historically, I’ve also lathered maple syrup onto my pancakes, but now that I’m buying it for myself, and seeing how expensive it is, I’m much more judicious. That will take some getting used to as well. Perhaps more honey, or an experiment with fresh fruit, will be necessary.
Do you have perfect pancake recipes? How well do they sync up with this one? Is there anything that you find especially important in the cooking process that I might be ignoring?
Molly won’t let me buy syrup, so I have been putting a lot of fruit into my pancakes. This counteracts the dryness of plain pancakes. I have used raspberries and strawberries (only $1 from Haymarket) with great success. If you do have syrup, you can put cinnamon into the batter as a yummy alternative.
I am very amused that you averaged several recipes. It makes the statistican in me happy. I would not recommend dropping the baking powder entirely. Though if you do, add more milk and egg and you’ll end up with crepes.
I used to only make pancakes from scratch when I made them, though I grew up with Bisquik. I used the Joy of Cooking recipe, which had 2 eggs to 1 1/2c flour (which is enough to make it quite eggy), 1 1/2c milk, 1tsp baking soda, and 1/2tsp salt, 3Tbsp butter, and a splash of vanilla (my favorite part – I’d recommend you try it), and I always cut the sugar down from 3 Tbsp to one or less.
Then I became gluten-intolerant and discovered that amazing, wonderful thing that is Pamela’s Pancake & Baking mix, which makes GF pancakes that taste like, well, normal pancakes.
Cinnamon in the batter will make the pancakes taste drier, because cinnamon is dry, spicy favor. Cinnamon and banana (or apple or pumpkin) however, works better because then there’s more moister to balance it out.
Alternatives for using syrup include fruit, as you mentioned, and also butter to melt on top and a smaller quantity of syrup. Personally syrup was one of the luxuries I always allowed myself on a student budget, because I did not think anything was even a close substitute. Putting fruit/spice/chocolate/&c into the pancake and then just eating it with butter also works. I never tried baking the maple syrup into the pancake, but you could.
Love,
Herbert.
P.S. In general, if you ever want to talk cooking, I am always up for it. ^_^
I’ve been making gluten-free pancakes, easier to digest. Try blueberry syrup.
Okay, now that the cooking advice has been dished out, here’s a suggestion from your aunty. How about getting back to work? 88 pages of dense text sounds daunting. Remember how fortunate you are to be in this grad program. Make the most of it, and if that means cutting down on dancing over the weekends, so be it. There’s plenty of time for dancing in your future. Make getting your degree a priority, Alex.
Thanks, Auntie Sandy. Rest assured that getting my degree is a priority. Don’t underestimate the value of productive procrastination, though.
Thank you all for your pancake tips!