Pancakes

This is a relatively cheap meal and very filling meal, though kind of labor intensive.  Kids love it.  You can serve with syrup or jam, or sift powdered sugar over the hot pancakes.  If your kid isn’t into sweets, you can just smear them with butter.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 tbs sugar
• Half a tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups milk (You can use water if you're really poor, or canned or powdered milk)
• 2 tbs melted butter or oil

Sift together the flour, two tablespoons of the sugar, the baking soda, and the salt.

 

Put the dry mix aside.

Separate your eggs.  Put the whites aside, and whisk the egg yolks in with the milk.  Do fairly thorough job, but don’t make yourself crazy.  Once they’re nicely mixed, add in the melted butter and mix that up too.

 Now fold the milky mix into the flour.  (Don’t over-mix – just mix until it’s integrated.  It’s okay if the mix is still kind of lumpy.) You should have a fairly loose batter – like a slightly thick cake batter.  If it’s thicker than that, add a little more milk.  If it’s looser than that, add more flour.

Now.  This is the important bit.

Take your egg whites and your hand or stand mixer and beat on high until they are very stiff.  Mix in the last tsp of sugar while you’re mixing them.  (If you have never beaten egg whites this way, you’re going to love what happens – this is how meringues are made.)  When the whites are very stiff and white and shiny and standing up in stiff peaks, take them and fold them gently into the batter.  These whites are what will make your pancakes light & fluffy.

Set batter aside while you heat your griddle or your big cast iron skillet (I use a cast iron griddle, but if you just have a big frying pan, that’s fine) to medium hot.  Spoon about a half a cup (or more or less depending on how big you want your pancake to be) out for each pancake.

When the edges are dry and there are bubbles in the middle, it’s probably ready to flip.  But pancake cooking is an art!

Feed to kids and partners one pancake at a time fresh off the griddle.  Though I’ve heard some people store them in a hot oven and then the whole family eats all at one time.  Crazy talk.