Pancakes are one of the easiest and most delicious foods you can make for breakfast. And although they’re generally viewed as unhealthy, you can add some fruit or nuts to your pancakes to add a bit of a health kick to them so you’re not left feeling as though you haven’t had enough of a healthy start for the day. The homemade pancake recipe we’re going to cover today is easy enough that anyone can follow it, even first time chefs.
Why Make Them Yourself
Although it’s much easier to go to the store and pick up a packed of pre-made pancake mixture, the flavor and texture of the pancakes never pan out the right way when you’re making them from a premade batter. Making pancakes from scratch results in much tastier pancakes and pancakes that can be completely customized in flavor.
What You Need
All of the ingredients you need to make pancakes are probably already in your fridge or pantry, meaning you won’t have to make a few extra trips to the store to get what you need. Let’s take a look at what you’ll need to complete this recipe.
- 1.5 cups of all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 3.5 teaspoons of baking powder
- 3 tablespoons of melted butter
- 1.25 cups of milk
- 1 egg
- 1 tablespoon of sugar (preferably white, but brown sugar works as well)
The Process
If you have kids around, you can invite them to help you as making pancakes can be a lot of fun for families to do together.
1. Grab a large mixing bowl from your cupboard so that when you add all of the ingredients together, you have a little extra room to other things in.
2. Take the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar and sift them into your bowl. The goal is to have them be a nice powdery texture as opposed to clumpy and unmixable.
3. With the ingredients mixed and sifted into the bowl, make an indentation in the center of the mixture to be able to add the milk, egg, and butter. The well serves as a miniature bowl so that the milk, egg, and butter mixture don’t seep into the powdered mixture right away.
4. Mix everything together until you reach a smooth consistency of batter. If you find that the batter is too thick, try adding a little more milk to the mixture to soften it up.
5. Now that the batter is ready, it’s time to prepare your frying pan or griddle. Heat the griddle to a medium heat (about 4 or 5 on a 1-10 scale on the stove) and spray it with non-stick spray.
6. Once the pan is heated, add about a quarter of a cup of the pancake mixture onto the pan and let it simmer for about a minute or so. The goal is to brown and harden one side of the batter.
7. When one side of the pancake has browned, it’s time to grab your spatula and flip the pancake over to do the same to the other side.
8. Enjoy!
Tip: If you would like to add fruit or nuts to your pancakes, the best time to do it is when you’re mixing the batter. Add a sprinkle of nuts or crushed bananas into the mixture and mix until uniform. If you’re adding solid fruits like strawberries or blueberries, it may be a good idea to add them once the pancake has made it to the pan. Sprinkle on your toppings onto the still moist part of the batter and when ready, flip the pancake over to cook the fruit into the pancake itself.
Best Pancake Mix
Although I said earlier on that making pancakes from scratch is much better than using a premade mixture, I know that not everyone has the time to make their own pancakes from scratch every morning. The best batter I’ve ever been able to find online is from a company called Pamela’s. Their Ultimate Baking and Pancake Mix is to die for and makes the pancake process much easier than if you were to do things from scratch.
The mixture is completely gluten free, making it perfect for folks that normally have to avoid premade pancake batter because of the gluten content. And with enough mix in a shipment to last a few weeks, if not months, it’s definitely worthwhile having in your kitchen if your family loves pancakes and you don’t feel like making them from scratch.