Good breakfasts are a rarity in The Foodscape household. We either wake up just an hour before we need to leave the house in the morning, which means we grab a bowl of cereal before we head out, or on days when we’re home, we wake up very close to lunch time and grab a smaller bowl of cereal. I’m not kidding, the boyfriend and I give Kellogg’s Chocos some serious business! 😛
So when I woke up last morning, I was quite surprised with my extreme hankering for pancakes. I say ‘extreme’ because I forewent my ritual of lazing in bed for just a few more minutes, and almost instantly was up on my feet, whisking away in the kitchen. That positively never happens. Well, I guess for pancakes, anything, yeah?
In these pancakes, I decided to use baking powder instead of baking soda which is the usually recommended choice when it comes to a pancake recipe. I remember reading somewhere, a while ago, that using baking powder makes fluffier pancakes. So I thought, why not? The key to making these pancakes light, soft and fluffy is the way you beat the batter. You have to make sure that you beat it enough to incorporate air into the batter, but also not over-beat it that you end up knocking out the air from the batter. Tricky, yes; impossible, no! All you need to remember is, the airier the batter, the fluffier the pancakes turn out.
Here’s what you need for The Perfect Pancake:
- All Purpose Flour – 1 and 1/2 cups
- Castor Sugar – 3 tbsp
- Baking powder – 1 tbsp
- Eggs – 2
- Milk – 1 cup
- Butter – 1/4 cup, melted
- A pinch of salt
- A pinch of cinnamon powder
- Vanilla Extract – 2 tsp
- Nutella – 1 cup
And here’s how to make it…
Step 1: In a deep dish, mix the milk, eggs and melted butter.
Step 2: Sift in the flour, and add baking powder and sugar and beat until just incorporated.
Step 3: Add salt, cinnamon and vanilla extract and give it a final mix, but be sure not to over-beat.
Step 4: On a low flame, heat a flat pan or griddle and grease it with butter.
Step 5: Pour 1/4 cup of batter into the centre of the pan and let it cook. When bubbles begin popping on the surface of the pancake, flip it over and fry until the other side is light golden. When you’re happy with the colour of the pancake, take it off the heat and fry the next.
Step 6: When you’ve fried the entire batch, stack them up, pull your cellphone out and take a drool-worthy picture of them to share on Instagram like I did. When the pancakes look this good, this is an essential step! 😉
Step 7: Sandwich a teaspoon (or two, three, four!) of Nutella in between each pancake.
Step 8: Pour the remaining Nutella over The Perfect Pancake stack, allowing it to flow over the edges. Top with strawberries or any fruit/sprinkle of your choice and eat right away.
I’ve made pancakes before, always using baking soda, but they’ve never turned out like these. They’ve always been clumpy, flat and rubbery – the exact opposite of how you want your pancakes to be. I don’t know what the science behind it is, but baking powder works perfectly! I must tell you, it was incredibly hard to stick to clicking photographs of them when I so badly wanted to stick a forkful in my mouth! God bless the boyfriend for bearing with the incredibly long photoshoot on a hungry tummy, with only the occasional ‘How much longer?’ 😀
These pancakes are subtly sweet, buttery and pillowy; just like the ones in dreams (that’s assuming you, like me, dream about pancakes). The cinnamon and vanilla give them a light fragrance; aromas you’ll enjoy as they melt in your mouth. And if you’re not a fan of Nutella, they go perfectly well with butter, maple syrup, sticky toffee sauce or just as. And it’s super easy to make them as well – 20 minutes, tops!
Whip up a batch of these perfect pancakes and eat up. Breakfast doesn’t get any better than this! 😀
The Foodscape 