Perfectly Fluffy Saturday Morning Pancakes

Like all San Franciscans, Steven and I love getting brunch in the city. And I always will until the day I finally have the skill to poach an egg and the guts to boil a live crab. But sometimes we don't feel like putting in our name on a waitlist, passing he time and then waiting around with every yuppie in town for a mimosa that's mostly made of OJ.

Sometimes you just need breakfast recipes that work and are delicious. Plus, you can finish making these in your pajamas in the amount of time it would take you to get dressed and Uber to your favorite breakfast joint. 

Ingredients

Dry Ingredients

1 3/4 cup of all purpose flour

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

 

Wet ingredients

1 cup milk (Save your sour milk for this recipe! It makes for a delicious pancake!)

1 cup sour cream

2 eggs

1/2 stick of butter melted (mix in quickly after melting to avoid it solidifying)

1/2 tsp vanilla

Half a lemon worth of zest, plus the juice of a quarter of a lemon

Directions

1. Mix your wet ingredients in one bowl and your dry ingredients in another. Combine both mixtures well with a whisk. 

2. Gently add your dry ingredients to your wet and mix thoroughly until you're rid of any lumps. Fun tip: Leave the baking soda and lemon juice out of the mixture until the very end, and then add your spoon full of baking soda onto the mixture, squeezing the lemon juice directly on top of it. You will hear them sizzle together as they combine. The chemical reaction between the two will put your pancake's fluff right over the top. After a few seconds, thoroughly mix them in

3. Heat a wide pan or a pancake pan up to medium-low, and once it's evenly heated, pour 1/4 cup of the batter into an even circle.

4. Quickly place chocolate chips or fruit of your choice onto your disk of batter right after pouring it. If you want the true Sydney and Steven experience, use a ton of Nestle's chocolate chips

5. Once you see that your pancake is about to start bubbling, peek at its underside to see if it's cooked nicely. If the color is golden, give it a flip. (In many recipes, you wait until there are a ton of bubbles to flip it the first time but not this recipe! Because the heat is so low on these, they won't produce quite as many bubbles.) Then heat the remaining side until the pancake is solid. Feel free to flip it on either side for more time for even and symmetrical coloring. Either way, as long as it's cooked all the way, it will taste delicious.

6. Since pancakes take forever to cook, Steven likes to keep the first pancakes he makes warm by keeping a towel over them on a plate while he makes the rest. This is also effectively done with aluminum foil. 

Tip: Steven also doesn't recommend using oil or butter on the pan for this recipe. The butter in the pancake does the trick to thoroughly lift it from the pan. Plus you'll be adding plenty of butter to these pancakes once you begin serving.

These go wonderfully with maple syrup, whipped cream, berries and or powdered sugar. But then again, what pancake doesn't? The beauty behind these pancakes is their texture. They are soft and absorb maple syrup like a sponge. Plus they have a very unique flavor that's a result of the sour flavors of the sour cream, milk, lemon zest and lemon juice. Together with the sweetness of chocolate chips and maple syrup, it's a beautiful combination.

I hope this recipe brightens up one of your Saturdays he way it has ours for the past five months. Be sure to subscribe to not miss future recipes or lifestyle blogposts