DIY Pancakes

About a year ago, Joey went through a phase where she wanted pancakes, or cake-cakes as she called them, every single day.  I started by giving her the occasional convenient frozen pancake, but she ate so many that it just wasn't cost effective.  So then I started making large batches using dry Bisquick, milk, and eggs and refrigerating the leftovers.  But one day Joey wanted pancakes and we were out of Bisquick, so I looked in my cookbook to see how to make them from scratch.  Here's what I learned:

Bisquick is a rip-off!

The ingredients of Bisquick are flour, shortening/butter/oil, baking powder, and salt.  I had these ingredients in my pantry all the time!  Why was I wasting our money on designer flour?  

Of course, Bisquick is a convenience product.  Buy it if you like that sort of thing.  But you should know that you don't have to.

Here's an easy from-scratch pancake recipe from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook:

1/2 to 3/4 cup milk
2 tbsp melted butter
1 egg
1 cup white flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Beat the milk, butter, and egg in a mixing bowl.  Mix the dry ingredients and add them to the first mixture, stirring just enough to dampen the flour.  Lightly butter or grease a griddle and set over medium-high heat.  Drop the batter on the griddle; flip when the top of the cakes are full of bubbles and the bottoms are lightly browned.   Bake on the griddle until both sides are lightly browned.  Serve.

The yield of this recipe is 16 pancakes, but I don't ever a correct yield.  This recipe is enough for one grown man, one pregnant woman, and one ravenous toddler.  I often double the recipe to have leftover pancakes for Joey to munch on for a few days.

You can easily modify this recipe by adding fruit.