Little Dapper Bois! Pancake Recipe!

So here’s the recipe (kind of, more of a loose explanation of how to do this) for the fluffy little pancakes I made the other day! I call them Little Dapper Bois! It’s a *bit* of a process to make the kind I did with the fluffy, whipped, egg whites and cream of tartar. For those of you less interested in kitchen adventures involving mixers and soft peaks - but can handle a basic pancake recipe, I’m sharing the basic recipe I crafted long ago here. This is all you need to make amazing basic pancakes in a big batch (that also freeze great!). Feel free to copy it and use it this weekend for a treat! Or dinner tonight! I'm not the boss of you.

Cold Antler Hotcakes 1.0

(Non Dapper Version)

1 1/2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 1/3 cups milk

Stick of butter for frying in.

To make the basic pancakes: take a large bowl and add the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder (all the dry ingredients) and whisk them together. In another, smaller, bowl (or measuring cup) add the vanilla to the milk and beat the egg into the milky mix with a fork. Really whip them in there, a solid mixture. Add those well-mixed wet and dry ingredients into the large bowl and use the whisk to really froth it up quick. You did it! That's it for basic pancakes. Now you need to make that stuff into cakes.

Warm up a cast iron skillet or flat pan on the stove on medium high heat. When heated, add a bit of butter to the hot skillet and use a spoon or ladle to make a small circle of batter. It spreads fast! Allow it to cook on one side a minute or so, when you see bubbles come through the batter, it’s time to flip it. Practice makes perfect with pancakes so expect to throw away the first few to the compost pile or lucky dogs or non-fussy spouses. Experiment! Every stove, mixture, it's all different. Fry them how it looks and tastes best to you.

Okay: Now if you want to try the fluffier fancy little Dapper Bois - here is how. Same recipe, but cut out the eggs and sugar. Prepare the dry the same way, setting your milk to the side. In another bowl you need to separate eggs. You need 6 egg whites, or around 3/4 a cup set aside. TIP: You NEED to make sure not a drop of yoke gets into these whites. Any of that protein will make it impossible to use a mixer and whip them into soft peaks.

When they are JUST the whites, set them in a bowl with 3/4 a teaspoon of cream of tartar. Mix these together for about a minute, until the eggs turn foamy. Then add the 1/2 cup of sugar and whip for a few minutes with a mixer. You want the eggs to turn white, shiny, and when you stop the mixer and lift it up a small peak forms that stays up like a perfect little Tim Burton hilltop like in The Nightmare before Christmas. There are a million youtube videos showing more detail on how to make soft/stiff peaks. If you need more assistance, it's homework time for you, baby. I'm just slinging ideas here.

Now is when you add the wet ingredients to the dry mix, folding in the whipped whites and milk with a spatula. Once it is clearly mixed, but not overly so (you want these egg whites full of air and not over worked) you can make pancakes the way you know how! These whipped up versions are a lot easier to cook, and don’t spread out like the regular pancake batter. The do need to cook on a slightly lower heat, a solid medium. Too much heat too fast burns the bottoms and leave the middle raw, before it can cook through. These take longer, and you can even try steaming them if you prefer (a metal bowl over them a they cook with some water spooned in to add steamed heat to really help them rise high like in Japanese pancake houses). But just button on a medium hot skillet works.

I made a blueberry syrup with a cup of frozen blueberries and half a cup of sugar heated and mixed on the stove. Powdered sugar too, for beauty and morale. And there you have it! ENJOY! Let me know how they turn out!