Sunday, Aug. 12, 2007, 11:53 a.m., Recipe: American Wheatmeal Buttermilk pancakes (not thin pancakes)

Adapted from Esurientes (2006)
Serves 3-4.(makes 15 pancakes approx.)

250g (8oz/2 C) flour
2 T baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/2 t allspice

2 egg
1 C or 300ml buttermilk
1 C or 300ml milk (to taste)
2 T or 50g melted butter
4 T syrup (I used honey but maple syrup, golden syrup is recommended)

butter for frying

Extras: topping - more syrup, jam, butter.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and allspice in a large bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together buttermilk, milk, egg, butter and maple syrup. You can prepare up to this stage in advance and keep both bowls in the fridge overnight to have pancakes without fuss for breakfast the next morning.
Pour into dry ingredients and stir until just barely combined (still lumpy).

Heat a lightly greased frying pan over medium-high heat. Drop batter in in rounds. Cook about 1 1/2 minutes per side, until browned. Second side will take slightly less time than the first side. Serve drowning in syrup, or with savoury toppings.

So that's the correct recipe. My variation wasn't a disaster, but I do have animosity towards American pancakes (entirely due to the cook's affections).

I do not have baking soda in the cupboards. I believed that the buttermilk, with extra time for the baking powder to "set" would be sufficient. Googling the comparative effects of 'b. soda' vs 'b. powder' led me to believe that this would work. (Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate/ NaCO3, vs Baking powder is baking soda + other agents.) It probably didn't. If I had also separated the yolks & whites of the eggs, and added them separately to the batter (whisking the whites into a nice fluff) then the non-baking soda may have worked.

This is what I did:

1. Whisk together dry ingredients (ex-baking soda) in a large bowl (to hold slightly more than 4 C of batter).
2. In a small bowl (to hold more than 2C of liquid), whisk together the non-dry ingredients (egg, buttermilk, milk, butter, syrup).

Note: You can prepare up to this stage in advance and keep both bowls in the fridge overnight to have pancakes without fuss for breakfast the next morning.

3. Make a well in the dry ingredients. Add the liquid mix into the dry ingredients gradually, stirring to a smooth-ish batter (still lumpy).
4. Heat a lightly greased frying pan over medium-high heat.
5. Drop batter in in rounds.
6. Cook first side until bubbles have appeared on top.
7. Turn pancake and cook the other side until browned.
8. Turn pancake onto plate. Make a stack of 4.
9. Serve slathered with toppings.

This is what happenned:

I burned my pinkie transferring a pancake to plate; pancakes folded in the middle in mid-flip on a regular basis; one pancake fell onto the hob while flipping; I had pancake bits burning on the hob; the st*pid small 2-hob affair in the apartment heated up a wider-than-expected area of the surrounding kitchen bench so the butter tub I had kept a small distance away from the hob was containing soft butter; my mum called me two to three times on the telephone interrupting the pancaking process; I hadn't had breakfast yet during all this.

The pancakes were floppy, and a bit dense. So I surmise that my variation of the batter mixture is incorrect.

It took about 1 hour for the actual cooking.

Taste test: It wasn't burnt. It was filling. It was too floppy for my preference. It was too dense for my choice. It was cooked. It was bland. Only lots of syrup or topping would make my recipe appealing.

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