This is Mom’s recipe for pancakes.
Pancakes
Ingredients----------------------------Single-------Double------Triple
Eggs--------------------------------------1-------------2-----------3
Milk – Cups------------------------------1-------------2-----------3
Oil –Tablespoons------------------------2-------------4-----------6
Flour – Cups-----------------------------1-------------2-----------3
Salt – teaspoons------------------------1/2-----------1-----------1 1/2
Baking Powder – Tablespoons----------2-------------4-----------6
Sugar – Tablespoons--------------------2-------------4-----------6
Mix eggs, milk, and oil in one bowl.
Mix flour, salt, Baking Powder, and sugar in a second larger bowl. When griddle is hot, pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just mixed. Spoon small amounts (try using a 1/4 cup measure for pouring) onto hot griddle and cook until the batter does not flow into the bubble holes, then turn over and cook the second side until golden. Serve right away while hot with maple syrup.
You may add as much as 1 or 1½ cups of almost anything to a single size bowl of batter before cooking. Suggested additions: canned corn (well drained), blueberries, mashed bananas, grated apples (with or without cinnamon), chopped pecans (go easy on these as they tend to make the pancakes taste/feel dry), pureed pumpkin with cinnamon and nutmeg, chocolate chips, 2 Tablespoons of powdered cocoa and 2 more Tablespoons of sugar. Be creative! For plain pancakes (instead of maple syrup), you may use jelly, preserves, fresh fruit, canned fruit, fruit syrup,… Again, be creative!
what oil is better olive oil or sunflower
For pancakes use sunflower or cannola oil. Olive oil has too much of a strong flavor for pancakes. I mix the egg yolk with the milk and oil, but whip the egg white to stiff peaks, and then fold into the batter just before cooking the pancakes. It gives a much lighter pancake if you want to take the extra step.
Sammach,
Gramma melted solid shortening (Crisco) and used that in the recipe. I wonder how melted bacon drippings would be? Mom always used corn oil. I prefer canola. lvdkeyes is correct that olive oil has a strong flavor; but depending on whether you are having the pancakes plain or mixing something else in, you might be able to use the flavor profile of the olive oil or mix the olive oil half and half with another oil that doesn’t have strong flavor. Pancakes essentially are a very simple, very plain form of bread. You can make them sweet or savory to stand on their own or be a compliment/side dish for an entree ie: corn pancakes instead of corn bread to go with chili. Why not try your olive oil and add herbs to make a kind of sandwich bread to go with a warm or cold sandwich filling? Pancakes can even be thought of as a substitute for batter coated, deep fried vegetables (think fritters or tempura). The flavor profile will of course be a little different, but you won’t be deep frying either. Think about the deep fried cauliflower, broccoli, or mushrooms you get at a restaurant, why not make them as pancakes instead and avoid the deep fat frying? Not only is it healthier, it will keep the kitchen cleaner - no splattering hot oil all over!
As for separating the eggs and beating the whites to fold in later, you can do that and it is a standard pancake technique, but this recipe has enough Baking Powder in it that you don’t need to do that in order to get the fluffy pancakes you desire. And yes, the measure for Baking Powder IS in Tablespoons.
Experiment with this and have fun. Let us know what you come up with!
Chilton