4 Key Things You Need to Remember While Making Pancakes

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"Why would anyone eat anything besides breakfast food?"- Leslie Knope

"People are idiots Leslie"- Ron Swanson

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Pancakes are delicious, and generally they're pretty easy to make.  If you're feeling a little lazy you can easily buy some mix at your local store, or you could get a little creative and make your own batter.  Either way pancakes are a pretty sweet and easy treat to make yourself when those muchies start grumbling.  Despite this, pancakes are also pretty easy to f**k up.  But- have no fear, here are the key things you need to remember when making yourself some dank pancakes!

1. The batter HAS to be smooth

Yes it's difficult and if you don't have a mixer you may get carpal tunnel syndrome.  But if you don't mix it completely your pancakes are going to be lumpy and who the hell wants lumpy pancakes!  No one that's who.  So mix that shit properly!

2. Butter the pan!

If you don't want your pancakes to stick, and therefore not be able to flip them, butter that pan!  It honestly just makes everything easier

3. Size doesn't always matter

Ok so I know everyone says it but I mean it, when it comes to pancakes size really doesn't matter at all.  In fact it's way easier to find success when the pancakes are small- they're much easier to flip.  In my first attempt I used a much bigger pan in hopes of creating giant fluffy pancakes but the first one broke immediately.  I then switched to a smaller pan and began, with much more success, to make significantly smaller pancakes. 

  However if you're pancake master then go ahead and try to make 'em bigger.  If you're a beginner like me, take it one step at a time and remember that's it's quality not quantity :)

4. Keep the heat on LOW

You will burn your pancakes if you try to cook them too fast.  Patience is key and chilling for like two seconds will not kill you

Now I'm sure that there's more to know- because let's face it there always is- but that's a pretty good jumpstart into the world of pancakes!

The Search For the Perfect Pancakes: Part One

I am obsessed with pancakes, especially ones with chocolate chips.  They're probably my favorite breakfast food.  Now that I am trying (hypothetically) to cook more in my life, I have decided to begin with something simple and delicious.  Also, making pancakes leads to eating them, which is the best. 

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To begin, I nerded out slightly, and researched some pancake recipes. Even though I've made pancakes on multiple occasions, most of those events involved a pre-made batch out of a box.  Thus, I decided that it might be better if I picked a recipe that wasn't too complicated.  I found it Pocket Change Gourmet, an amazing food blog that everyone should check out when they have the chance.  The recipe describes it's pancakes as classic and "Old Fashioned Homemade Pancakes."  So I'm seriously hoping that they'll be delicious. 

Prepping the Cakes

When prepping for the actual process of cooking and flipping the pancakes it's important to keep the wet and dry ingredients separate in the beginning. 

Wet Ingredients:

1 egg, 3/4 cup of milk, 2 tablespoons of cooking oil

Dry Ingredients:

1 cup of flower, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 3 teaspoons of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt  

Making the Cakes

Mix all of the dry ingredients together in some sort of bowl, or honestly whatever you can find is probably alright.  Then, in a separate bowl, mix together the wet ingredients.  If you want especially fluffy pancakes crack the eggs and separate the egg whites into a separate bowl.  Then, proceed to beat until frothy, and then mix in with the rest of the wet ingredients.  Mix until your batter isn't lumpy, because really who wants lumpy pancakes.   

Heat a pan on the stove, but make sure to spray it down with nonstick spray.  And take a few scoops of batter and toss it on the pan.  I personally like my pancakes big and fluffy, so this batch only made about four for me. 

Key: when you start to see the batter bubble it's time to flip the pancake.

My first pancake wasn't exactly so beautiful, so we're going to conveniently forget about that one and move onto my second pancake which looked pretty damn good. 

By the end I had a small (tiny in fact) stack of pretty dank pancakes.

While they may not have been quite as beautiful as some other pancakes in the world, they tasted pretty good and that's alright with me.  I would definitely try to take my own advice in the future- aka I gave up on separating the egg about two seconds into trying (it should be noted that it was before 8am and I had had only one cup of coffee.) 

Either way lather 'em in syrup and who cares if they taste like shit, they're covered in syrup which is sugary and delicious.