Pancakes From Scratch! Because It’s Just Too Easy

“Maybe we should have pancakes.” My daughter says, when I ask what we should have for breakfast that sunny Saturday morning.

“Hm. Yea, we could. But I don’t have any mix.” I respond, bottom lip between my teeth.

I am a huge fan, HUGE, of making food from scratch. Unless it is just way to much work, I will do it myself from all raw ingredients. I make my own chicken stock; I make macaroni and cheese from scratch; I make cheeseburger macaroni from scratch. Cheeseburger freaking macaroni, as in the Hamburger Helper dish we all ate when we were kids.

Too Much Work

For some reason, though, I have always been convinced that pancakes were going to be super complicated.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a lover of pancakes. Every time we go out to breakfast at a diner I get a side pancake. One pancake on the side. It’s my dessert after breakfast. I’ll order corned beef hash, potatoes, toast, eggs. And a pancake on the side. I only end up eating like a quarter of my breakfast because I want that damn pancake, smothered in butter and syrup.

At home, however, it is an entirely different story.

I typically buy Kodiak Cakes, which are all natural whole wheat pancakes that you only have to add water to. I make them a couple of times a week for breakfast for me and Celaya. I fry them on my griddle and eat them plain. We eat them with eggs as a grain side. And watermelon, always have watermelon on hand if you can.

Different Worlds

But when Celaya asked me that morning to make pancakes, I didn’t have Kodiak Cake mix. And I knew the men in my house would not be down for whole grain nutty flavored pancakes anyway.

So, I perused the internet to see how simple I could get the process to be from scratch. After checking a couple of websites and making a few adjustments for my own insistence on simplicity and ease and for my palate, I came up with a pretty damn good, easy! recipe, if I, and my family, do say so myself.

Here it is, for your Sunday morning brunching pleasure.

Pancakes From Scratch

Dry Ingredients:

2 cups flour

2 TBSP sugar

1/4 tsp of salt

1 TBSP baking powder

Wet Ingredients:

2 eggs

1/4 cup butter (melted)

2 cups milk

1 tsp orange extract

Preparation:

Mix your dry ingredients in a large bowl

Mix your wet ingredients in another bowl. Make sure to beat your eggs first, then add melted butter (make sure it’s cool, so it doesn’t cook your eggs or curdle your milk), then add extract. (You can use literally any flavor you favor, haha. I prefer orange flavor in my breakfast sweets. But lemon is good too, or even almond.)

Add your wet ingredients to the bowl with the dry ingredients. Mix together until everything is wet. Do not overmix.

Heat up a griddle to high and add a bit of vegetable oil.

When the griddle is piping hot, pour your batter onto the griddle using a 1/4 cup measuring cup.

Cook pancakes until the batter is bubbly on top. Then flip. Wait a couple minutes, then remove.

Make another batch. Should give you about 16 to 20 pancakes.

Serve with butter, syrup, and anything else you like.

Since it was Sunday brunch in my house, which is usually a big meal, I served this dish with bacon, scrambled eggs, and watermelon. Click on the links for my bacon and eggs preparation.

You can watch me below cracking eggs with one hand while holding a baby and talking to my five year old. You see why I need things to be simple?

 

The great thing about pancakes, too, is that you can snack on them all day.

P.S. be sure you make these on Sunday, and that Sunday is your cheat day!