Pancakes

I love me some pancakes, and don’t you tell me for a second that you don’t, because I’d know that you’re lying. I guess the reason I don’t make them more often is because I feel like I kind of need an excuse to make them. Like if the whole family’s in town (dear family – you come by for breakfast, and I can make you pancakes, or waffles, I’m just saying), or if it means life or death (like if someone knocked on my door, and said: I need 300 cc of pancakes, stat!..I would make him pancakes). Another good excuse is snow on the ground. All sense of healthy eating goes out the window the second snow hits the ground. It’s probably evolution. You see back in the Paleolithic day, when there was a ton of snow on the ground, people couldn’t go out and hunt and gather so much, so they would instinctively have to engorge themselves in pancakes.

Well, when a grand total whopping 4 inches studded the ground outside my apartment, and school started “late” (9:30…that’s not late, that’s on time…but no one asked me), it was pancake time. I took out my handy dandy joy of cooking cookbook, and made some pancakes. And lemme tell you, I wish it would snow every day, because these were awesome, and easy. So much so, I’m still trying to figure out why people buy the pre-packaged mix stuff.

Start by mixing the flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder, and in a separate bowl mix together the milk, ricotta, eggs, melted butter – cooled (more on that in a second), and vanilla. Now for the ricotta – the original recipe called for a cup and a half of milk, but I figured what the heck, you’re not the boss of me, I’d use 1/2 cup of ricotta, and cup of milk.

As for the butter, I melted the butter, but completely forgot to put it in, and it came out just fine. Of course I did cook them in butter. So the moral of the story is, if you’re gonna be a yodel and forget the butter, at least cook them in some butter ok?

Next we combine the wet and dry ingredients, but just like when we made waffles, you want to combine them, until they literally just come together. It will look chunky, and like it needs some more mixing, but don’t, and I’ll tell you why. When you mix flour and water (ie milk) you form gluten. Gluten is great in breads, because it gives it it’s chew, but that same chewy consistency in bread is exactly what you don’t want in pancakes. So mix as little as you can.

And now it is time on sprockets for when we cook.

Heat up a pan or a griddle if you’ve got one over medium heat, and heat up some butter. Ladle a ladle-full of pancake batter, and nudge them in to the shape you want.

You know they’re ready to flip when bubbles start to come through the surface.

And then you enjoy. And I hope you enjoy it with some real maple syrup, because that Aunt Jemima stuff just doesn’t cut it. And I also hope you don’t mind I started the last three sentences with the word “and.”

And the end

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups of flour
• 3 T sugar
• 1 1/2 t baking powder
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup ricotta cheese
• 3 T butter melted
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 t vanilla

Directions

1. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in one bowl, and combine milk, ricotta cheese, butter, eggs, and vanilla in another bowl
2. Gently combine the dry and wet ingredients until just combined
3. Heat a skillet or griddle over medium-high, and melt some butter, and ladle out about 1/3 cup of batter per pancake, and cook until bubbles start to appear on the top, and flip, and cook until the underside is lightly browned.