The Constant Nibbler

For a long time, I have known about pancakes and how they're such a breakfast staple in so many nations. I have made Indian style semolina pancakes for a while now using yogurt or ENO (efferevescent fruit salts) as the raising agent, but it was recently at Aardee Villa (that's how my friends refer to their humble abode in Gurgaon), that I had the inspiration to try my hand at the famous American Pancakes after being served a decent variant of the same by my friend's boyfriend.

So armed with the zest to make my own delightfully fluffy version of those pancakes, I decided upon a recipe that called for buttermilk and tweaked it to suit my pantry, so here goes. I was overjoyed with how great this recipe worked out in terms of flavour and texture. I didn’t have maple syrup so I made my own caramel-cinnamon sugar by caramelizing some brown sugar with water and flavouring it with cinnamon stick and some butter. You can also drizzle honey or chocolate syrup or serve it with ice cream.

Makes: 3 (decently filling portions)

Time: 15 mins

Ingredients:

Refined flour 1 ¼ cups

Baking powder 1 teaspoon

Baking soda 1 teaspoon

Sugar ¼ cup

Milk 1 cup (a little less; so that Milk+Vinegar =1 cup)

Vinegar 1 tablespoon

Egg 1

Refined oil/butter 2 teaspoons

Method:

In a bowl, lightly beat the egg. Add sugar and oil and beat to a smooth paste. Finally add milk and fluff up the mixture some more. In another bowl, sieve through all dry ingredients and add the egg mixture, folding everything in gently. Finally add vinegar and mix well so that the entire pancake batter is smooth and lump free. Let it rest for 5 mins. The mixture will most likely develop small bubbles on the surface.

Heat a griddle on medium flame. Your batter is ready to be spooned onto the griddle once water sprinkled on the griddle jumps. Brush your griddle with some refined oil/butter and spoon 1/3 rd of your pancake batter in the centre of the griddle. Adjust flame to low so that pancakes cook on low heat. Cover with a lid. You’d start to notice some bubbles, that’s to show you’re doing good! Flip pancake over once it’s evenly browned on one side and cook uncovered for some time.

Transfer to a serving plate and continue with the rest of the batter. At the end of it all, serve your super fluffy (almost cake like) American Pancakes stacked on a plate with a dollop of butter and maple syrup drizzled all over. Believe me these pancakes are yummier than those served by most restaurants and they barely take any time.

Tips:

1. A little oil goes a long way when cooking these pancakes.

2. To keep your pancakes warm till they are all ready to serve, warm a ceramic plate over fire/microwave oven and stack all pancakes on the plate.

3. Sieving all dry ingredients together has a very good effect on the lightness quotient of the pancakes and so does sieving the flour before measuring it. These pancakes fluff up even without using a lid while cooking. But I feel that they become noticeably fluffier when cooked covered (on one side only).

4. Milk+Vinegar is actually a substitute for buttermilk in this recipe. Buttermilk makes for a lighter pancake. I usually don’t have it and so milk+vinegar works for me on most occasions.

5. This is a great base for several variations – you can add dates+walnuts or rum+raisins or banana+walnut, chocolate, basically anything that you fancy.