Potential Breakfast Winner: Pancakes

You can't expect a person who devotes their time to writing about food and eating food and thinking about food and working around food to hold European model weight.  Now, I wouldn't consider myself a fat person, but I've certainly got some shape.  Regardless of my feelings, I woke up in the morning, requested that my boyfriend toast my bagel--as he does every morning, what a sweetheart--and put my pants on--who, apparently, do not share my feelings about my weight.  AND THIS HAPPENED:

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?

I'm disturbed by this for many reasons.  For one, I'm not exactly a connoisseur of pants, if you get my drift.  EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY...I mean, have you ever seen pants rip like that???  COME ON, PANTS.  I further accused my boyfriend of not telling me that "I got fat" and that I had to find out from the unfortunate combustion of my pants.  While I'm not one to dwell on my weight, you may be only seeing carrots and hummus for the next six weeks. 

But before we get too crazy, let's eat some pancakes. 

Now, I'm not going to lie, eating pancakes from a box is a great thing.  It's very hard to compete with boxed items because they are specifically engineered to taste better than the real thing.  That's the key right there, though.  Do you really want to eat something that has been engineered in a lab by scientists?  No.  I don't think you do.  But more importantly, don't you want to learn how to make your own food so you don't have to rely on a box to make it for you?  

That's what I thought. 

Another nice thing about making pancakes is that they are incredibly easy and, if you don't have the right ingredients, can be easily tweaked.  So, take note. 

Here they are:

SIMPLE PANCAKES

1 1/2 cup flour

3 1/2 tbsps baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

1 1/4 cup milk 

1 egg

3 tbsp melted butter

Ok, let's get to tweakin'.  Here are some ideas for you if you want to try different things:

Flour - If you are convinced that you can make pancakes healthy, you can substitute this with wheat flour.  Knock the recipe down by 1/4 cup or try to make it half whole wheat, half white flour.

Baking powder - if you're not much of a baker, you may not have baking powder around, but you probably have baking soda.  You can replace this by using half the amount of soda for the powder.  Blamo!

Milk- I don't keep milk in the house, so I generally use almond, rice or soy milk.  Sometimes if I'm feeling really wild, I'll use buttermilk.  If you're dying for some buttermilk pancakes, but only have milk, you can squeeze about a teaspoon of lemon into the milk and let it sit for a few minutes.  Yum.

Egg- if you don't have eggs, you can replace with banana or applesauce.  For every egg, you need 1/4 cup of one or the other.  Though, as you may be able to figure out, this will alter the taste.

Ok, there you have it.  You can also throw in fruit, or add pumpkin, cinnamon and nutmeg, nuts or anything else to pancakes to make them awesome.  Today, we are going to make cinnamon roll pancakes. 

You'll also need the following for this recipe:

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tbsps butter, softened

1 tbsp cinnamon

1 tsp milk/rice milk/cream/whatever

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 - 3 tbsps milk/whatever

Righteous.  You'll enjoy these.  I make them for two reasons:  They are delicious and sometimes I don't have syrup and still want to eat or have already started making pancakes.  I'm also traumatized by my childhood because, though my mother is a wonderful cook, upon discovering that there were pancakes on the table but no syrup to be found she would pull out the Karo.  If you don't know what that is, it's CORN SYRUP in it's truest form.  Fucking gross. 

Mom, take note. 

You'll mix all your dry ingredients in one bowl and all your wet in another.  Then, pour the wet into you dry.  Mix a little bit but not too much.  Leave some of the lumps in, otherwise if you mix it all up into a smooth watery mixture you'll end up with some flat ass pancakes.  Not good. 

Make sure you have a nicely heated griddle or pan with some butter on it.  Don't throw it on a pan that is warming up because your pancakes will look weird and no one will be impressed.  Superficiality is the number one priority in cooking.  

Throw 'em on the griddle!

I'm not much of a shape maker, if you didn't notice.  I'm more of a taste maker.  HEY OH!

Cook 'em up so they are nice and golden on each side.  You can throw them in a heated oven for a bit to keep them warm.  Don't cover them or they will get all nasty and mushy and moist.  Gross.  Don't do that.

Between flipping, you can make the stuff to put on the pancakes.  Let's start with the cinnamon gunk.

You're going to grab a small bowl and mix up your sugar and cinnamon.  Then add your butter.  Easiest way to do this is to squish it in with a fork and then mix it up until it's all mixed together.  Add a little bit of the milk to make it spreadable.  It'll look like this:

Also note the Oskar Blues in this picture.  You may or may not choose to drink during this cooking endeavor, but please remember to be careful near hot items while you're enjoying some brews in the a.m.

Now, even easier is the frosting.  Just mix all of the ingredients together until you get a nice runny, but not too runny mixture.  Easy enough to drizzle, but you don't want it thin like milk.  If it's too milky, add some more sugar and vice versa.  Like this:

Runny, but not too runny.

When your pancakes are done, you can cinnamon roll-a-tizing them.  Take one pancakes and spread the cinnamon mixture on top.  Like so:

Take the other pancake and put it on top of this pancake.  Then, drizzle some of the frosting over it and then, VOILA!

Totally radical.  AND HOW.

Now, I made this for a friend and I only mention this so you don't make the same mistake.  For some reason, she couldn't figure out the "concept."   I caught her separating the pancakes and eating the top one and then the bottom one.  Now, that's all find and whatever, but it totally defeats the point of eating these.  Upon making note of this to her--by taking note, I'm pretty sure I mean that I yelled at her for insulting my creation--my boyfriend told me "not to tell people how to eat your food."

Don't be either of those assholes and eat it right and keep it delicious.

Bon appetit.