Perfect Pancakes by Jamie Oliver

My mom sent me this Tweet from Jamie Oliver (celebrity chef extraordinaire) months ago, along with a care package of self-rising flour. Turns out it is the easiest way to make pancakes when you're craving them, and they always turn out fluffy and light! Try adding blueberries, chocolate chips, or other additions to customize to your tastes. Perfect!

Ingredients:

1 egg
1 cup self-rising flour
1 cup milk (I use fat-free or 1%, lactose free milk by Lactaid)
Pinch of salt

Directions:

1.) Whisk ingredients together. Pour onto a hot griddle that's been lightly coated with canola oil (you can tell it's ready when a drop of water placed on the pan starts to sizzle). Allow the edges of the pancake to harden and then flip it. Cook another minute or so, checking the underside for doneness.

That's it!

I saved this recipe for Valentine's Day (I had a lot planned and didn't want to lose time on an extensive, complicated endeavor), and poured the pancakes into a silicon heart-shaped mold for a breakfast filled with love. And chocolate chips. It worked great and gave me plenty of time to set up gifts, make bacon (another way to show your love), and get ready for a date at Gameworks. But really, you can use these pancakes for any occasion!

Classic Pancakes!

Before the month of April is over, I should probably post my Easter treats! In addition to a very quick egg dye job the night before (for the same recipe see Easter of 2012), I also opted for some classic, traditional, Sunday pancakes to eat on Easter morn'.

Never officially posted on this blog (though it was mentioned), my go-to pancake recipe has been utilized almost every Sunday in my parents' house for years on end. The recipe originally comes from the "Bette's Diner Buttermilk Pancakes" recipe as found in the The Pancake Handbook. My only change has been the use of whole wheat pastry flour to get just a little more nutrition in there, and occasionally dropping in some blueberries. Cutting the recipe in half works for a small family breakfast, or you can make the whole recipe if you're having Easter guests for brunch! Best of all you can (attempt to) make them in the shape of a bunny! Hopefully yours will come out less creepy than mine....

Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 Tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups buttermilk
1/2 cup milk (any kind)
2 eggs
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
Canola oil for greasing the griddle

Directions:

1.) In a large bowl, sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt together. In a separate bowl, combine the buttermilk, milk, and eggs, beating them lightly. Make sure your melted butter has cooled slightly, then add it in, whisking together the wet ingredients quickly with a fork to avoid curdling.

2.) Add the wet ingredients immediately to the dry ingredients and gently fold to combine everything until there is no more flour visible. Do not overmix. The battery should be thick and lumps are okay.

3.) Drizzle the canola oil onto a griddle over medium heat. Brush the oil around with a paper towel to fully coat the surface, then test with a drop of water to determine if it's hot enough (a griddle that's ready will sizzle when the water hits it without evaporating too quickly).

4.) Pour about 1/4 cup of batter onto the griddle to make the face of the bunny. Add a couple more drizzles in the shape of a line to make each ear. Dot with blueberries, if you wish, to form the face (about 13 blueberries per pancake seems to be a good amount when not making bunny faces).

5.) Let the pancakes cook about a minute, then lift the edge up slightly with your spatula to check for browning. If the underside is golden brown, flip the pancake and let it cook for another minute on the other side. If it's still pale yellow, wait a little longer. Resist the temptation to flatten your pancakes as this will ruin all your leavening agents' attempts to make the pancakes rise into fluffy goodness. When the color is perfect, simply plate them in a stack, butter them, and serve them warm with your choice of syrup.

My mom likes to heat maple syrup in the microwave and drizzle it on top. My dad likes the thicker, classic Log Cabin for his short stack. I like to eat mine plain, right off the griddle, while they're still just a little raw. So addicting. Such a treat--which may be how we got the "cake" in pancake. But despite the dessert-like qualities, it really makes for the perfect breakfast to celebrate an important time of year, and another reason to look forward to Sundays.

Valentine's Breakfast Pancakes

Sure, some people ignore it, some people think it's overrated. But no matter your relationship status, I think it's always fun to celebrate Valentine's Day. Honestly, I've been celebrating all week at work with handing out candy, wearing red clothes, and sharing different stories of love.

When February 14 finally did roll around I still wanted to do a little something special to commemorate it. I already knew my day was going to busy with various commitments so I doubted I'd have time to craft my own chocolates (as I've done in the past), or even make it out to a nice Valentine's dinner. The solution: squeeze in a Valentine-themed breakfast.

During the week I was reading Valentine's stories on Facebook and came across an intriguing photo and recipe for Dark Chocolate Pancakes with Raspberry Sauce from the Eat Drink Love blog. I already had most of the ingredients, and a quick trip to the grocery store brought me the remaining buttermilk, raspberries, and fresh eggs I would need to construct a pancake experiment. I made the batter and raspberry sauce the night before to ensure enough time for breakfast in the morning.

Like any pancake recipe, this one was a simple mix of dry and wet ingredients cooked on an oiled griddle, with a bonus of delicious fruit syrup (cooked like a compote, then run through a sieve to remove the seeds). The fun part was shaping them into hearts and enjoying chocolate for breakfast!

Chocolate Raspberry Pancakes

Ingredients:

For the raspberry syrup:
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
2/3 cup fresh raspberries, rinsed

For pancakes:
3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup unsweetened dark coca powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 Tablespoons sugar
pinch of salt
1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Directions:

1.) In a small pot, combine the water, raspberries and sugar. Cook over medium heat until the mixture comes to a boil, then lower the heat to simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. It helps to smush the raspberries a little with a spoon. After 10 minutes, remove from heat and blend the mixture in a food processor until smooth (I don't have a food processor, so I just stirred it vigorously with a fork). Strain through a sieve (optional) to remove seeds.

2.) In a large bowl combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Create a small well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the buttermilk, beaten egg, oil, and vanilla extract (the original recipe didn't say when to add in the chocolate chips so I left them out). Stir the ingredients until just combined but do not overmix.

3.) Heat a pan or griddle to medium heat and coat with canola oil. When the griddle is hot enough that a drop of water sizzles when lightly splashed on the surface, you know it's time to pour the pancakes. Spread about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of batter onto the griddle with a spoon, shaping into a heart (draw two thick "lines" and let them meet at the tips like a "V").

4.) Leave pancakes on the griddle for about 1-2 minutes on each side until cooked all the way through. Remove and top with the raspberry syrup and a few fresh raspberries.

My only issue with this recipe is that the pancakes came out a little more dry than I would have liked. To remedy this for next time, I might add a little milk to the batter (many pancake recipes call for buttermilk and milk) use melted butter instead of canola oil in the batter (perhaps two tablespoons instead of one) and/or add the chocolate chips into the batter before cooking the pancakes. But I didn't want to go too overboard with the chocolate--it was still early, after all.

With a few modifications, you can make this recipe for your special someone, your chocolate-loving friends, or as a quick treat for yourself! Happy Valentine's Day!

Apple-Cinnamon Pancakes

I've always been quite the pancake person. Pancakes were, after all, the first things I ever learned to bake, standing at my grandfather's side on Sunday mornings when he'd come all the way from Texas with my grandmother to visit our family during the Christmas season. Now, Sunday morning pancakes remain a tradition at our house, primarily because my dad requests them every week without fail. With school and work taking up the majority of my life lately, my mom had lately been the one to take up this task. Now that I'm officially done with school, however, I jump at any potential baking opportunity.

With the fall season finally coming upon us (my favorite, favorite season and best time for baking), I decided to give our traditional pancake recipe a seasonal twist, adding apples and cinnamon to our standard following of Bette's Diner Buttermilk Pancakes by Bette Kroening (as found in The Pancake Handbook: Specialties from Bette's Oceanview Diner). Nothing says fall quite like apples and cinnamon...except maybe pumpkin...but that's a blog post for another day....

For a Sunday morning in September, enjoy Bette's buttermilk pancakes, turned Apple-Cinnamon Pancakes, with love and adaptations by me:

Ingredients

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (the only flour I use, though all-purpose flour will work just fine)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt (I use sea salt)
2 cups buttermilk (1% milkfat if you can find it)
1/2 cup milk (skim)
2 eggs
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted (that's half a stick)
1-2 small apples, sliced into thin wedges (I prefer gala apples myself)
Cinnamon
Canola oil for greasing the griddle

Directions

1.) In a large bowl, sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir together until just blended.

2.) In a separate bowl, combine the buttermilk, milk, eggs, and melted butter (I melt the butter in a microwave-safe dish in the microwave for about 40 seconds, watching to make sure it doesn't bubble over). Make sure to let the butter cool before adding it to the mixture or it will curdle the eggs (stirring quickly can help avoid this).

3.) Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, stirring just to combine. Make sure the flour has been fully incorporated, but don't over mix (lumps are OK! Don't feel the need to wipe them all out!).

4.) Drizzle oil onto your griddle and brush lightly with a paper towel to spread it to all corners of the pan. Heat the griddle on the stove to about medium heat and test for temperature using a few flicks of water droplets. If the droplets sizzle without evaporating too quickly, you're good to go.

5.) Pour about 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of batter onto the griddle, centered directly over your stove's burners. Add your apple slices onto the disc of batter (be as decorative as you like) and sprinkle generously with cinnamon. Wait about a minute, then check for a golden brown color underneath the pancake by lifting the edge just slightly with your spatula. If you've achieved that perfect color, you're ready to flip! Wait just another minute or two for the other side to cook, and then serve while still warm.

These pancakes smell amazing! You'll be instantly transported into all of fall's goodness, even well before the official date of Sept. 23. Yes, I'm counting the days....