Tuesday Dinners

Step by Step Directions

Combine your flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in a bowl. You can mix it with a whisk, with a fork, by spinning/tossing the bowl. It’s up to you, just make sure it’s uniform.

A lot of recipes will tell you to make a well in the center and then add in the wet ingredients there. Nothing is stopping you from doing so, I just think it’s an unnecessary step.

Make sure the butter is soft enough that it will combine with the other ingredients. But a word of warning for if you melt the butter, we don’t want it to start cooking the batter.

Mix together your batter. You don’t want to overmix it, it’s not actually a cake batter, just get it to the point where the dry ingredients are no longer visible.

According to an executive at the Inter-country Homestead Of Pfannekuchen the key to their pancake batter is that all the ingredients are cold when they are combined. This prevents the batter from rising until it hits the griddle. So if you want to pop your batter in the fridge I won’t blame (or make it the night ahead of time).

Diners and restaurants have several advantages over a home cook:

• They make pancakes like it’s their job.
• They have a griddle that is a consistent temperature
• They have specialized tools for evenly distributing the batter

If you want to invest in a flat top, or a pancake dispensing machine than don’t let me stand in your way. But I used a measuring cup and then spread it around with a spoon, so it was made with love but that’s why it looks like that.

I started my pan off at a medium heat and then turned it down after the first two pancakes.

You want to see a bunch of little bubbles/holes appear on the back of the pancake to know that the other side is cooked. Once it’s got a bunch of bubbles it’s time to flip.

The other side typically cooks for about half the time the first side does (in my experience). But feel free to check the bottom as much as you’d like.

Once it’s out it’s up to you to determine toppings and anything else that strikes your fancy. You’re the master of your own destiny, you might as well eat like it.

Enjoy.

Variations

• Add mixins, whatever you want. Personal favorite is chocolate chips, however something I’ve seen done that I really like is to slice up a banana, put it on the pancake, then warm up some peanut butter and mix it with some powdered sugar and drizzle it on top.
• Add some vanilla to your batter, it adds just a hint of sweetness.
• Apparently diner pancakes taste better because they use malted milk powder, so you can try that. I’ve also heard of people using some sourdough in their batter.
• If you want to make some buttermilk it’s very simple. For every cup of milk add one tablespoon of either lemon juice or distilled white vinegar, mix it together and let it sit for 3-5 minutes.

Unsolicited Feedback

• DP: They taste better in the restaurant.
• FA: Why are they so small?
• IP: I like mine with blueberries. No chocolate chips. No bananas. Why can’t you just make them like I want?