Pancakes for Magnus

How much joy
can a buttery little
griddled batter
bring

The Perfect Pancakes

When my (now 17 month old) son, Magnus, started eating real food, pancakes were the first thing he loved. I’m sort of partial to more savory breakfast items — eggs, bacon, hash — but clearly to win the heart of my favorite person, I had to learn to make pancakes.

I tried a ton of different recipes, some very traditional, some a little international. Some were unnecessarily complicated (whites and sugar!), some were too thin or flavorless. Eventually, I gave in and settled on the base of the #1 recipe on the internet. Of course after a lot of testing, it required a little adjustment here and there and frankly the serving size just wasn’t enough to feed two hungry adults and a baby who ate more then both of us.

After doing this every weekend for a couple of weeks, I realized it was silly to have tons of different measuring cups and watch it come out slightly differently every time. So, I turned to my absolute favorite kitchen tool, my digital scale which made the prep for this recipe 10 times faster and cleaner. If you don’t have a digital scale, do yourself a favor and get one. The other benefit of scaled ingredients is that it becomes a no-brainer to multiply this for as many hungry babies as you need to feed.

When we moved into the new house and I got to design my dream kitchen, it included a range with a full built-in griddle. At this point, its basically exclusively a pancake making machine, used once a week to fill that little belly. If you don’t have a griddle, a nice flat well-greased griddle pan will do.

Wet ingredients

335g Whole Milk
55g White Vinegar
4tbsp (1/2 Stick) Butter
2 Eggs

Dry Ingredients

300g All Purpose Flour
60g White Sugar
8g (2 tsp) Baking Powder
6g (1 tsp) Baking Soda
5g (1 tsp) Kosher Salt

1. If you have a griddle, turn it on and warm to 400*. Turn your oven on its lowest setting and place a sheet pan on the middle rack.
2. Take large bowls and in one, measure and mix the milk and vinegar. Stir with a whisk and set aside. If the bowls are not the same size, use the smaller one for the wet ingredients.
3. Melt the butter in the microwave or in a pan over low heat. Do not brown.
4. Measure all the dry ingredients in the other bowl and use the whisk to stir together for at least a minute, making sure to break up any clumps. If you’re really feeling ambitious or your kitchen is damp, sift each ingredient into a bowl first.
5. Whisk the melted butter and the eggs into the milk until fully combined and a little frothy. Make sure you do this quickly so the warm butter doesnt cook the eggs. The milk should be cold enough that this isn’t an issue.
6. Slowly pour the wet mix into the dry mix and whisk together until a smooth and uniform batter forms. This is relatively strenuous. Consider it the workout to make up for all the pancakes you’re about to consume. Make sure there are NO CLUMPS or any unicorporated flour. Just keep whisking until that’s the case.
7. Turn off the oven that was holding the sheet pan — this will be your area to keep the finished pancakes while you cook.
8. Using a measuring cup (or if you’re cool — a pancake pen and gently pour out about 1/4 cup of batter to form a round pancake. When the top bubbles aggressively, flip and cook the second side until browned. Each pancake will take about 2–3 minutes to cook depending on how hot your griddle or pan is. Don’t mess with the pancakes while they’re cooking. Transfer finished pancakes to the sheet pan in the oven.
9. When all the batter is gone, take the sheet pan out of the oven and transfer pancakes to a plate. Stack ’em high and serve with real maple syrup and butter.