Batter Up!

Sunday is often pancake day in the house of Swami. So I am hereby publishing my mother's Perfect Pancake Recipe along with all her tips I can remember. My mom? Was a fabulous cook. Possibly better than Coco.

1 egg
1 & 3/4 cup buttermilk or sour milk
1/2 tsp fresh baking soda
1 & 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp finely granulated sugar
2 tbsp clarified butter, cooled
1 tsp fresh baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

(This recipe makes about a dozen cakes.)

Mix the dry ingredients together thoroughly with a wire whip. There should be no clumps! (Mom always sifted at this stage, I usually skip that because I'm lazy.)

In another bowl combine all the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly. You can use the same wire whip or even an electric mixer because the wet stuff needs to be completely homoginous.

Add the wet to the dry and gently, ever so gently blend them with the wire whisk. This is the point where you don't want to overbeat the batter. Barely mix it. The batter will look like it's full of small grains of rice. This is good.

Now let the batter sit & rest for a few minutes, maybe 5 or 10. (If your kitchen is very hot put it in the fridge to rest, in which case it can sit refrigerated for a few hours or even overnight (but that's pushing it, IMO.))

Mom always used an electric skillet set at 375' to cook 'em. I use a heavy bottomed teflon pan. Either way, you want the pan oiled but not floating in vegetable oil. Spray on oil works dandy! (Don't use butter on the pan unless it is clarified butter because regular butter will burn at that temp before the pancake is done.) (Too much oil will give you speckles of burn spots. You want a perfect, even golden-brown color on the finished cakes.)

DON'T stir the batter before adding it to the pan! From this point on the batter is totally delicate and the less you handle it the better. Using a ladle, gently make puddles of batter in the hot griddle. They should spread pretty well by themselves but if the batter rested a bit long you may need to swirl them just a little. (If you want fruit in your pancakes, now is the time to add it. I love to sprinkle fresh blueberries into the puddles of batter.)

Turn when they are ready, which is about when little bubbles which come up brake open and the edges of the pancakes look dry & cooked. You can peak under an edge with your spatula to be sure. (Never flatten the pancakes with your spatula while cooking! This does nothing but make them tough.) Flip them gently and cook the other side. Try to turn them only once.

Perfection eaten hot from the pan, while the surface is still hotcrisp and the insides steamy. People can mess with coffee or toast or fruit or sausage or whatever else is on the table while they wait for their turn at hot from the griddle pancakes.

If you insist on everyone eating the cakes at the same time, reserve the cooked pancakes, uncovered, on cookie sheets in a warm oven, in single layers. Do not stack them until they go onto your eating plate.

And there you go. Perfection. My mom used to substitute a few tbsp of the flour with buckwheat flour because we all liked that taste. Some people like malted flour, but not me.

And always, butter and real maple syrup is the best topping! Also good are fruited syrups or even a nice jam, provided it is made with cane sugar. Corn syrup is evil.