Buttermilk Pancakes

Pancakes are the quintessential weekend breakfast.  Back home, Sunday brunches were a common occurrence in our family.  I am now continuing the tradition here a college and cooking brunch once a week or so for my friends here.  This week was pancakes.  If you have buttermilk lying around you should definitely use that.  Two weeks ago, after I made the chocolate cake, I had lots of extra buttermilk and thus used that.  This week, however, not wanting to purchase butter milk expressly for this purpose, I just used regular milk.  If you mix a teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice into a cup of milk, it will work instead.  This generally results in a thinner version of buttermilk so you probably want to add an extra 1/4 cup of flour to the batter if you want thick, fluffy pancakes.

Buttermilk Pancakes

• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 3 tbsp. sugar
• 2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 cups buttermilk
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 1/4 cup melted butter

Directions:

Mix together the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.  In a separate bowl whisk together eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla.  Slowly pour in melted butter while continuing to whisk.  Pour liquid ingredients in to dry ingredients and mix until they are just combined.  The batter will still be somewhat lumpy but you don't want to over mix the batter.

Heat a skillet over medium heat.  Pour in half a cup of batter. When the pancakes start to bubble and look somewhat dry around the edges they are ready to be flipped.  You can check this by slightly lift up the edge to the pancake.  Cook on the other side for about 3 minutes and then remove from skillet.  You do not want to flip the pancakes back and forth because this will result in denser pancake.

- Sophie