Buttermilk Pancakes

Generally speaking, I'm more of a French toast girl than a pancake girl.  Perhaps it is because French toast and grilled cheese are the first things I learned to cook back when I was about 5 years old.  In any case, living with roommate over the past year, I've gotten into the habit of making pancakes on the weekend.  I've tried a few recipes and have come to the conclusion buttermilk is a must.  Plain old pancakes are just blah.  Also blah are mixes.  I haven't used one of them in years.  Besides, it doesn't make sense to spend money on a mix when homemade pancakes can be made with ingredients I keep in the house anyway and taste so much better.

The recipe I've come up with has the benefit of being small.  It probably makes 6 to 8 pancakes depending on the size.  The recipe makes enough food for my roommate and me with enough batter left over for me to have a second batch the next morning.  Also, because it is small, it doesn't take much in the way of ingredients, so even if you have only one egg in the fridge, you can make these.  This recipe isn't my best recipe, but it is good.  It's especially good if you add fruit.  I like to put the fruit right into the batter instead of just on top.  You can use fresh or frozen, but out of fear of having half-frozen berries in the middle of my cooked pancake, I defrost the frozen ones first.  When I'm in a hurry, I do this by putting the berries in a ziploc baggie and running warm water over them.  They don't have to be completely defrosted, just enough that the heat of the stove can do the rest.

Buttermilk Pancakes

• 1 cup cake flour (You can use all-purpose, but the pancakes are more tender with cake flour.)
• 1-2 tbsp sugar (I go with one, but I once used 2 by accident, and it was fine if you like them sweeter.)
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp.baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 1 egg
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 2 tbsp of melted butter or canola oil (I like to do 1 tbsp of each.)

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients, but don't get too zealous or you'll end up with flour all over the place.  Add egg and buttermilk, and begin whisking together.  Once everything is wet and lumpy, add the butter/canola oil to smooth it out.  Mix until most of the lumps are gone.

2. Heat a skillet on medium for a few minutes until the pan is good and hot.  (By trial and error, I've come to know how hot this is, and it's probably best for you to figure it out yourself, too.)  Pour 1/4 to 1/3 cup of batter into the skillet.  Let the pancake cook till bubbles begin to form and edges look dry.  Using a spatula, flip it over and cook until done. 

A final word to the wise: Do not turn up the heat so your pancakes will cook faster.  You'll end up with the outside cooked and the inside runny.  When I first started making pancakes in my teenage years, I often ended up with pancakes whose middles were uncooked.  Finally, my mom saw what I was doing, reached over, and turned down the stove.  I've never had that problem since.

Master Muffin/Quick Bread Recipe (and that's master in every sense of the word!)

What I am going to share with you now is, well, one of my very favorite recipes for baked goods.  It is also one of my secrets, but I've decided to let the cat out of kitchen, so to speak.  (And for the record, I don't even have a cat, so there's never been a cat in the kitchen, which means no burnt paws and absolutely no cat hair in the food.)  I typed this up a few weeks ago for my baby sister, who, unwisely, elected to use another recipe.  Her mistake because this one is good. 

I've come to it after a lot of mucking about in the kitchen and trying this or that recipe in search of the perfect recipe.  What it is really is the combination of my own likes and dislikes with the best ideas and tricks from other recipes, recipes which were good but not to my taste.  (A special shout out to The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook by Christopher Kimball from which I stole the idea of using liquid fat instead of solid.  Christopher Kimball is one of my cooking gods, though he and I see eye to eye on little.  However, he's a master of technique, helpful information, and interesting stories.  Cook's Illustrated, his magazine, rocks my world.  You should check it out, but most especially if you are a meat-eater.) 

This recipe may not achieve perfection, especially if your tastes are a bit different from mine, but it comes close.  At the very least, it is a great starting point for your own expressions of culinary genius.  Happy baking and, especially, happy eating!

a yummy zucchini muffin

Master Muffin/Quick Bread Recipe

Basic Ingredients

• 2 cups + 3 tbsp. flour
• 1 ½ tsp. baking soda
• ½ tsp. salt
• ¼ cup canola oil
• ¼ cup melted butter
• ¾-1 cup sugar (¾ cup for banana muffins, 1 cup for the others)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Banana Variation

• 2-3 tbsp. buttermilk
• 4 to 5 medium-sized mashed very ripe bananas (around 1 ½ cups, I think)
• ½ cup walnuts (optional)

Zucchini Variation

• 1 ½ tsp. cinnamon
• ¼ tsp. nutmeg
• ¼ tsp. ginger
• ⅛ tsp. allspice
• 2-3 tbsp. buttermilk
• 1 to 1½ cups grated zucchini (1 small to medium zucchini)
• ½ tsp finely grated lemon rind
• ½ cup walnuts or almonds (optional)

Cranberry Orange Variation
(Note: Omit the extra 3 tbsp. of flour.)

• 1 ½ medium navel oranges’ worth of rind
• 1/3 cup orange juice (from 1 navel orange) + enough buttermilk to equal 1 cup
• 1 cup dried cranberries

1. Preheat oven to 350º. Grease a standard loaf pan with butter or shortening or line muffin pan with muffin liners. Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, and any spices. If called for, add citrus rind you are using to the buttermilk. In a separate bowl, beat the butter, oil, sugar, and eggs for two minutes with an electric mixer at medium speed. Add the vanilla, and then add the wet ingredients from your chosen muffins and the buttermilk and mix for an additional 30 seconds.

2. Using a large rubber spatula, stir in the flour mixture. Mix by hand until just combined. If using nuts or berries, add them now. Don’t overmix. Pour into the prepared loaf pan and bake for 60+ minutes or pour into cupcakes liners and bake for 18 minutes or until the top springs back when lightly touched and a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning the bread or muffins out to cool completely on the wire rack.
Makes 1 loaf or 16 muffins.

Okay, a few last suggestions about modifications.  If you are watching your cholesterol, you can use only canola oil instead of the butter/canola oil mix I use.  Alternately, you can rock it like Christopher Kimball and use only butter.  Using only butter, though, seemed to lead to more browning, which I don't like so much, and a flavor I found--shockingly to me, a lover of butter--to be too buttery.  Instead, I prefer the butter/canola mix and then smearing my finished muffin or quick-bread slice with butter.
 
Another suggestion I have is making muffins instead of bread.  I personally don't like the very crisp, very brown outer shell you get with quick breads.  Because they are dense and wet, they take a long time to cook.  Recipes always say 50 to 60 minutes, but I have found that they generally need more than 60 minutes to cook.  If you make muffins, though, 18 minutes is fine, and they turn out way more light and fluffy than muffins usually do, almost more like cake.  If you want them more brown, they can stand hanging out in the oven up to 22 minutes until they start over-browning and drying out, though of course this totally depends on your oven.  Most of us, I suspect, don't have professionally-calibrated ovens, but if you are a frequent baker, you probably know your oven's particular quirks.
 
One last thing, and then you can get cooking.  Of the variations, the zucchini is probably the superstar.  All the spices add some complexity and make it yummy.  If you are looking to impress, that's the way to go (or to trick your kids into eating some green veggies), and if you want nuts, let me humbly suggest the almonds, a happy discovery that resulted from my not having any walnuts at home one day when I was baking for a person who insisted on having nuts in them.  Zucchini and almonds make great friends.  The banana variation is decidedly plain Jane, especially in comparison to the zucchini.  My mom made hers plain Jane, and that's how I make mine.  If you want to jazz it up, add nuts.  I hate nuts in banana bread, but it is your bread, so you can do what you want.  You can also add some cinnamon, too.  I had an ex who liked that.  As for the cranberry orange, it is a lot sweeter than you might think, but not in a bad way.  If you want it less sweet, use less sugar or see if you can find some unsweetened dried cranberries.  In my local supermarket, however, there were only sweetened ones.