Anger Burger

I hope.

Please, please ignore the grout.  I’ve bleached it so much I burned my nose.

Like a lot of cooks, my mom and I have holy grails.  We occasionally reach them, and this is why we keep cooking rather than break down into lurid CMYK Hamburger Helper purgatory.  One of my mom’s big ones was one-at-a-time pancakes and I remember the day she called me, voice raised in gloating victory.  I’VE DONE IT.  I’VE FINALLY DONE IT.

I wooed a boy with the promise of banana pancakes.  True!

Store-bought pancake mix, for being so simple, is alarmingly disappointing.  And really, pancake mix is basically just flour and leavening agents — your inability to do this yourself marks you as a noob more than your Mario Batali cookware¹ does.  Sorry, betty.  Get used to it.

Chocolate-bar  pancake for me.  It was that kind of day.

Originally the pancakes were for camping, when the ability to mix just two individual pancakes for her and her husband was the difference between making them and skipping them in favor of something less wasteful.  After the great formulation she realized she could be making herself a single pancake for breakfast at home as well.  But that is neither here nor there.  The point is this: with the dry parts mixed and stored away and a jar of the wet mix kept in the fridge, a single pancake is only a small bowl, a spoon and a hot skillet away.

Again with the grout.

So what’s with the forgiveness part?  Well.  Let me tell you.  I didn’t exactly ask my mom if I could share her master pancake recipe with you guys, but I’m sure she’d say yes.  I mean, it’s you guys.  We love you guys.

Starr’s Pancakes
a single pancake is simply 1/4 C. of dry mix with as much wet mix as needed to make it thick but still barely pourable, about three spoonfuls or something, it depends on your buttermilk.  and the buttermilk is crucial, in my opinion, don’t substitute it with plain milk or something else.  vegans have their own blogs, go find them.

dry mix
2 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. salt

wet mix
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
2 Tbsp. melted butter.

• There’s really not a lot I can teach you if you don’t know how to make pancakes.

• Also, the wet stuff keeps for a little over a week in my observation, depending on how sterile your container is.

• I also replace the butter with flax oil and add maybe 1/4 cup of ground flax seeds to the dry mix, but that’s only for people who are obsessed with their brains being lubed with enough Omega-3 fatty acids.

• You might also notice there is no sugar in the mix.  This is intentional, and a reminder to soak the cooked pancake with so much maple syrup that it drips all over your shirt.

• I almost forgot! Don’t mix the wet and dry together until just before cooking — the baking soda reacts with the acid in the buttermilk and poofs it up really quickly, which is in large part what makes fluffy, lovely pancakes.

¹I actually own a Mario Batali spatula that I hate and should just give to a bum and get  over it.  Whenever it gets warm, it curls.  True story!