Breakfast of Champions

Sometimes I wake up craving pancakes. Usually in my dreams the pancakes are syrup soaked and served with veggie sausage links. But we don't have maple syrup or fake sausage here. Luckily, pancakes are quite versatile. You can stick just about anything in a pancake. When I was in college, I loved visiting my Aunt Kelly for pancake day - she had an assortment of add-ins and toppings (chocolate flavored readi whip, OMG!).


Since it's nearly winter here, I added in some blackberry jam in place of the actual fruit. And Guille requested chocolate chips. For toppings, we had honey and powdered sugar. Yes, I could have made fresh whipped cream but making pancakes from scratch before having coffee is a feat in itself.


I found this basic recipe here, but let me know if you have a favorite buttermilk recipe, like from Silver Skillet in Atlanta. I plan to try making some with lemon zest in the future.

• 2 c. flour
• 2 1/2 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. salt
• 1/2 t. sugar (my addition)
  
• 1 egg, slightly beaten
• 1 1/2 c. milk
• 2 T. (28g.) melted butter

Sift together flour, bp, salt and sugar. Combine egg and milk in a separate bowl and stir into flour mixture, add melted butter. You can combine your add-ins at this point or you can go ahead and ladle batter into your warmed, greased (I used spray) non-stick pan and then add them to your raw pancake - but push them in a little. I added small drops of jam to the cooking pancake, so that I would have little bursts of blackberry. Chocolate chips are easier to combine with the batter.

I prefer to cook on med low heat for a more even pancake (this takes 3-4 minutes per side). Flip when it's browned to your preference. A lot of people like to keep pancakes warm in the oven until they're all ready to serve, but we eat them as they come off the griddle. I also halved the recipe for just the two of us - and scrambled the other half of the egg. yum.