Papa’s Pancakes

Did you know this is Pancake Tuesday? I uncovered this fact when I was looking up some Lenten customs a couple weeks ago. In case you don’t want to read the article above, the important piece is this:

Shrove Tuesday (also known in Commonwealth countries as Pancake Tuesday or Pancake day) is the day in February or March immediately preceding Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent), which is celebrated in some countries by consuming pancakes. In others, especially those where it is called Mardi Gras or some translation thereof, this is a carnival day, and also the last day of “fat eating” or “gorging” before the fasting period of Lent.

I don’t know about your household, but we eat “breakfast” foods quite often for dinner. Pancakes, waffles, French toast, breakfast meats with scrambled eggs and toast … it’s good any time of the day. We love breakfast however, weekday mornings don’t always allow for the bigger time-consuming breakfast preparations, so why not make use of them in evening meals as well?!

Not that this is a time-consuming recipe. In fact, it’s one of those wonderful, “throw everything in the bowl and mix”-type recipes. And it truly is a Papa original. Papa and I both do lot of our baking and cooking rather hodge-podge. A little of this. A dash of that. In fact, it’s gotten to be a running joke in our household something like this:

Papa:”did you like that?”
Me: “yes, I did.”
Papa: “too bad. I can’t duplicate it.” 🙂

Fortunately, this was one of the few experiments where either he wrote it down right away, or I caught him shortly afterwards and quizzed him on what he did. Now we have it written down permanently so we can enjoy these light and fluffy pancakes. And we have … several times!

This recipe is great because it’s easy to adjust – especially the milk to flour ratio. As it stands, the recipe below will give you a very “loose” batter, one that will result in thin pancakes. They will be thicker than crepes, but perhaps 1/16″-1/8″ thick. You can make them thicker by either reducing the milk or adding more flour. We’ve done both without problem, all depending on what mood we are in.  All the pictures shown here have more flour added than the original recipe.

There are three eggs in the recipe because 1) we usually have a surplus of eggs and 2) we like the added protein with all those starches.

I’ve substituted out half the all-purpose flour for wheat flour without my family complaining. A few times I’ve added blueberries and a teaspoon of cinnamon to the batter. They’re good with syrup or homemade jam. … and I’m getting hungry now!

Print Recipe

Papa’s Pancakes

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 2 cups milk
• 2 Tbsp baking powder
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 Tbsp granulated sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour see Notes

Instructions

• Mix all ingredients together thoroughly with a whisk. Cook over medium heat until bubbly, then flip and cook on the second side until golden brown.

Notes

The recipe as written yields a thin pancake. Adding more flour OR reducing the milk content will result in thicker pancakes.