fluffy pancakes

I was having issues with my pancakes. I used the recipe from m's second hand copy of The Joy of Cooking. I don't know what I was doing wrong but the pancakes were so dense instead of being light and fluffy. Last weekend I did a search for pancake recipes and found one to try. I can't remember where it came from (sorry recipe source! If you recognize this recipe, please let me know and I will give you credit) and I certainly don't want to lose it because it made the BEST pancakes EVER. Light, fluffy, soaks up the syrup. So good!



The photo is blurry because my rechargeable batteries don't hold their charge long and within a day of putting freshly charged batteries in my camera they give up and the camera says I need to change the batteries again. Argh.

Also I put too much butter in the pan for this batch so they sort of fried in butter instead of searing on a hot pan. Still tasted good.

Fluffy Pancakes

1.5 cups of flour
3.5 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
1 Tablespoon of sugar
1 1/4 cup of milk
1 egg
3 Tablespoons of melted butter

Melt the butter.
Mix all the dry ingredients together with a whisk. Make a well in the middle and crack the egg into it. Pour the milk into the well and then the melted butter. Mix well. The batter should be thick and a little lumpy. That's okay.

Heat a pat of butter on a skillet on high heat. I usually turn the skillet to spread the butter around. Sometimes I'll use the spatula to help out. When the butter starts to make a little noise, turn the heat down to medium-high and add scoops of batter to the pan spaced out at least 1" apart.

I used a large soup spoon to spoon the batter into little pools. The batter spreads a bit and if it's not as big around as I like I add a little more batter to the top and watch the weight of it spread the pancake out further. When the edges start to harden and the pancake starts to rise a bit, I slide the spatula under the side of the pancake to test the give. If it feels sturdy enough, I take a chance and flip. I didn't time it to see how long it would take to brown enough for flipping, I'll try to remember and do that next time and edit the info here.

Once flipped, watch to see that the doughy sides have hardened/cooked through. That's when you know that the pancakes are cooked all the way through.

I place the cooked pancakes on a plate and stick that in my oven (unheated) while I make up the rest of the batter.

Serve with syrup or jam and enjoy.