Near Perfect

I know, there must be a gajillion pancake recipes on the world wide web, each with its very own blinking neon sign proclaiming This Is It This Is the One. But I've tried 'em all, and none have ever turned out to be The One for me.

You know what the problem is? The egg. Every single pancake recipe out there measures its amount in whole eggs. This is madness, since eggs come in so many sizes. I only realized recently that all my pancakes have been way too eggy, resulting in what amounted to a thick crepe: all dense and smooth and kind of chewy.

I guess everyone has their own ideal, but I like my pancakes fat and tall, with a medium crumb. One thing I find that helps is a thick batter--like cooked-oatmeal thick. I'm not often proud of the things I produce in my kitchen, but I can't help but feel a little swell of satisfaction over my near-perfect pancakes.


In case Jenny's seeing this and is reeling in horror, I love butter but, no, I'm not some mad butter fiend. That's a square of gouda cheese in the middle.

They're not picture perfect, but they're exactly the pancakes I crave. And every time I polish one off, I collapse back in my chair with a gusty sigh and a small grin.

Here's the recipe. It's for one pancake--I know, this is the kind of thing I do that gets me the "She's not one of us" look. But you end up with a pancake that's just the right size for easy flipping. And I find the small ingredient quantities make whipping one up extremely quick and easy (there's less threat of overmixing), so you can have a pancake just minutes after a craving hits you.

Near Perfect Pancake
6 tablespoons whole wheat flour*
1 tablespoon rolled oats
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch (1/16tsp) of baking soda

30ml beaten egg
70ml plain (unsweetened) yogurt
1/2 tsp oil
1 1/2 tsp maple syrup**

* I find whole wheat flour makes a sturdier pancake, which is what I prefer. If you like yours kind of floppy and wimpy, you can use all-purpose flour, but you'll have to reduce the amount of yogurt.
** I use maple syrup cause it blends faster and easier into the batter.
***Notice how the egg and yogurt combined add up to 100ml? I eyeball 30ml of egg in my liquid measuring cup, then top up the cup with yogurt until it gets to 100ml. Next into the wet mix is the 1/2 teaspoon of oil, which nicely greases up the spoon in preparation for the maple syrup, which will just slide neatly out.

1. Get all your ingredients together.
2. Start heating up the fry pan with a teaspoon of oil (butter tastes nicer but it burns easily and stinks up the place).
3. Briefly whisk all the dry ingredients together.
4. Add all the wet ingredients to the dry. Gently give the batter about four slow swirls with the whisk--so everything is still very thick and lumpy (should not be a pourable consistency).
3. Give the hot pan a swirl to spread the oil out a bit and then just use some tissue paper to evenly rub the oil around.
4. Spoon your batter into the pan and gently spread it into a rough disk that's about 1cm thick.
5. Well, hopefully you know what to do after this. Just one word of advice: be gentle when you flip your pancake.

If I don't feel like a syrup-doused cake, I sometimes make a small scramble out of the leftover egg, sprinkle cubes of cheese over the batter right after I've spooned it into the hot pan, and then--hmm, should I tell you this?--top the finished pancake with a spiral of Sriracha, quite possibly the best chilli sauce in the whole world. Serve the scrambled egg and pancake together.