Banana Pancakes

What, more pancakes? Look, if you have people over for brunch as often as I do, you have to have more than one pancake trick up your sleeve. This is my basic pancake recipe (the sour cream ones I posted last week are my basic recipe now) with an over-ripe-spotty-but-not-solid-black-yet banana thinly sliced and added to the uncooked side just before flipping them over. If you have a little butter in the pan, the bananas caramelize ever so slightly and get sweetly fragrant. Way better than just slicing some bananas on top of the pancakes after they're finished.

I learned this method of banana pancake making from one of my former roommates, Yves, who also happens to be the person who schooled me on plantain frying. Go figure. I wonder if I still have a photo of her huevos rancheros... they were to die for!

Banana Pancakes

serves 2-3 people, makes roughly six 8" pancakes.

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 cup milk

1/2 cup sour cream

2 tbsp melted butter

1 or 2 overripe bananas thinly sliced

In a medium bowl, whisk the dry ingredients. Set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, sour cream, and melted butter. Stir gently into the dry ingredients, leaving the batter a little lumpy. Add more milk if needed to make the batter pourable.

Use a 1/3 cup or 1/2 cup measuring cup to pour batter onto a hot, lightly buttered griddle. When the large bubbles start to show up, lay a few slices of banana on the batter before flipping the pancakes over. If you put the bananas down too soon the batter underneath never cooks.

Best. Pancakes. Ever.

I think it's pretty clear that I'm a breakfast fanatic. These are the best. BEST. pancakes I have ever had. I've been on a kick lately of putting sour cream into quickbreads of all kinds, after a really successful experiment involving waffles a few weeks ago. I somehow always seem to be out of sour cream now. Small price to pay for fluffy delicious breakfasts, if you ask me. The quesadillas can live without it, right? Err... not really.

Often with thick pancake batter, you end up with really nice pancakes with a bit of uncooked batter in the middle. It's always so disappointing, and I hate serving pancakes to friends only to find halfway through brunch that they've found themselves a glob of uncooked batter on their plates. That doesn't happen with these. That's only part of why I'm so in love with them, though. You'll understand when you try them.

For the record, since the first time I made this recipe, 2 weeks ago, I've made them 5 times. Damn! I also discovered that pancakes are really really awesome with Nutella and sausage and apples. Not that I'm surprised.

Amanda's Favorite Pancakes

serves 2-3 people, makes roughly six 8" pancakes.

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 cup milk

1/2 cup sour cream

2 tbsp melted butter

In a medium bowl, whisk the dry ingredients. Set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, sour cream, and melted butter. Stir gently into the dry ingredients, leaving the batter a little lumpy. Add more milk if needed to make the batter pourable.

Use a 1/3 cup or 1/2 cup measuring cup to pour batter onto a hot, lightly buttered griddle.

You know how to make pancakes, do I really have to explain? Nope. :)

Classic Pancakes

This pancake recipe is brought to you by my grandma's 1951 edition of the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, and the phone call I got a few days ago from a good friend who was interested in making pancakes from scratch. Figures she'd call me - I've got a strict No Boxed Mixes rule, so of course I have a tried-and-true pancake recipe handy. I have made some adjustments from the original recipe, because a) for some reason the amount of milk called for in that cookbook leaves you with thick almost doughy batter that never cooks all the way through, and b) I can't ever leave a recipe how I found it.

Pancakes
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
1 egg
1 cup + 2 or 3 tbsps whole milk
2 tb vegetable oil or melted butter
1 tsp butter for the skillet

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar.
In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, and oil.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until just combined. Batter should be slightly lumpy.
Heat your skillet over medium/high heat and add the tsp of butter. When this butter is bubbly, you're ready to go.
Using a 1/3 cup measuring cup, pour one pancake in the middle of the skillet. How this one cooks will determine whether you need to add more milk or not. If it doesn't spread out sideways, or if the bubbles don't show up for several minutes, you need more milk to thin it out. If it cooks too fast, turn your heat down a little.

Once you know your batter's the right consistency, you can put one or two pancakes onto the skillet at a time. They will be about 5" or 6" so leave room for them to spread. When the pancake has bubbles all over the top, it's time to flip it. Each side should only take 2 or 3 minutes.