A guest post about something dear to my heart, the perfect pancake.  My favorite is blueberry pancakes, which requires even more testing to figure out the perfect mix of berries and batter.  The language is his, and a good chef should have a good vocabulary!

Pancakes

by Joshua Frost

Pancakes are very special. I’ve been working on my pancakes my entire life, and have

Not a pancake…

decided to help everyone make better pancakes. Everywhere I have tried pancakes commercially, and ESPECIALLY in the homes of other people, I have been struck by how thick, and cakey they have been. If you like your pancakes that way, you should definitely keep eating them that way. I’m going to give you my recipe for pancakes that will knock your fucking socks off.

This recipe will yield about 8 6” pancakes. Perfect for two people.

First. Throw away your fucking bisquick. If you are making pancakes with a pre-mixed batter or flour, STOP IT. Manufacturers of these products put all kinds of shit in there that you don’t want in your body, and give the pancakes an off flavor.

Here are the ingredients you will need:

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1 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 tablespoon of vanilla extract
1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar
1 fucking egg.
Milk. Plenty of it. You are going to add milk until you get the consistency of the batter right. You may fuck this part up a couple of times before you get it where it needs to be.

Get a medium size skillet together and throw it on the oven over medium heat. Let the fucking pan heat up. Nothing grinds my gears more than a pale pancake.

Whisk together the dry ingredients first.

Add the egg, vanilla, and about a cup of milk.

Get a whisk. If you don’t own one, gather some change from your couch, and ride your bike to the thrift store to buy one. If you don’t have a bike, then walk. You could use the exercise.

Whisk this all together and it should be a pretty thick batter. The trick with the milk is to add it in small portions, you add too much, and you will have to add more flour to compensate. I don’t recommend this, because it will definitely fuck up the flavor of your pancakes.

DO NOT OVER-WHISK!

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When you pull the whisk out of your batter, it should be the consistency of Pepto-B. You should be able to see a rapid dripping from your whisk.

Now that your batter is done, you should either put some butter in your skillet, or spray it with some pam or similar product. They make shit that is straight canola or other oil that is pressurized with co2. Spray that shit. The pancake batter contains sugar, and that will stick to your pan like a motherfucker if you don’t lubricate (giggety) it. Spray the skillet after every two pancakes.

Pour the batter from a bowl with a spout or a measuring cup. Pour it slowly and deliberately.

You’ll begin to see bubbles forming on the top. Once these bubbles start popping in earnest, the pancake will be ready to flip. Use a smallish spatula to do this. I fucking hate wide-ass spatulas, and that is because they fuck up my pancake flipping. This part will take some practice, but you’ll get the hang of the timing pretty quickly.

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I call these “Meridian’s Crepe Cakes” because they are light, thin, and fucking delicious. Kelly calls them “thunderjacks”. If your pancake is more than 1/4” thick, you have not added enough milk to the batter. If thinner, you’ve added too much.

Stack these fuckers on a plate, and put a pat of salted butter between the pancakes. Pour REAL FUCKING MAPLE SYRUP on the pancakes. You just went through all the trouble of making pancakes from scratch. Do not ruin them by putting some fucking maple-flavored corn syrup on them.

Where the maple syrup comes from, except no imitation.

You’ve got one life. It’s too fucking short not to eat good pancakes.

Enjoy.