I’ve made these pancakes for Fancy Breakfast Friday before, but I never shared the recipe.  The reason I made something as standard and boring as pancakes is that I have had an ongoing buttermilk situation.  I know I have complained about King Soopers before but here I go again.  They have goat, soy, almond, cow, banana, chocolate, coconut, cashew and probably more types of milk.  But last time I looked for buttermilk they didn’t have any.  The dairy guy said, “You know, you can just add a splash of lemon or vinegar…”  And I said, “I KNOW! I’m the queen of making fake buttermilk.  But when I plan ahead and I’m at the store, it’s because I want ACTUAL buttermilk.”  But I said it very nicely.

This time I did find some, but all they had was a half gallon.  Has anyone ever needed more than a pint of buttermilk? No.  So I used buttermilk in the biscuits last week.  I had halved that recipe, so that left me with half a gallon minus 1.5 cups.  To use a bit more, I tripled this pancake recipe that I usually double.  (The next day I made cornbread with some more of the buttermilk and I still need to use the rest assuming it hasn’t gone bad.)

Here is the basic recipe – this is for one small batch of pancakes – I always double it, sometimes triple it.  This is adapted from Simply Colorado, which was a wedding shower gift.  (It’s old.)

My Go To Pancake

1 cup buttermilk or yogurt.  (The yogurt makes it very think.  If I use yogurt I double the recipe and do half milk/half yogurt.)
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup whole wheat flour (when I tripe I do 2 cups whole wheat and 1 cup all purpose flour)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
optional blueberries

Add all dry ingredients to a bowl and mix with a fork.

Measure the milk in a measuring cup that is larger than the amount of milk you are using.  Crack the egg into the measuring cup and stir well with a fork.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir with the fork until just mixed.  Allow to rest for a second while you heat the griddle.

I make these pancakes in a smiley face skillet.  Using a ladle I fill each face with batter and put a spoon full of frozen blueberries on top.  When the edges look cooked and bubbles are rising I flip the pancake onto another heated skillet.  There is no way I could accurately flip the pancakes onto the faces in the skillet.  So my smiley pancakes are one sided.  This actually makes it go a lot faster since I have two skillets cooking pancakes at once.

My other pancake secret is that I keep them warm on a plate in the microwave.  This is great in the summer when you want  warm pancakes, but you don’t want the oven heating up the house.  This is a trick I learned from Dave.

These pancakes were loved by all, and eaten all weekend, sometimes as a pancake and peanut butter sandwich.  Sometimes toasted. Sometimes just at room temperature like a piece of delicious bread.

If you are looking for a trip down memory lane, please feel free to read this description of Luke’s first day of kindergarten.   It came up when I was searching my blog for “pancake”.