i really hope you guys get that reference it’s a stretch i know
Hey. Hi. How are you, How, HOW ARE you? How are you doing? How’s life going? Okay? Just okay?
Like ugh same but I have something here that will make it better. That will make our lives better, and it’s been working for centuries.
“Medicine?” You ask?
“Herbal remedies?”
“Ancient techniques that you, a white girl in your early twenties somehow discovered?”
Ahhhhh no. Something better.
Pancakes!
You squint your eyes and purse your lips. Lines in your forehead start to appear. You look into a mirror and scream! For you look just like your mother!
And that’s why you should be more open to new ideas.
These pancakes will NOT solve your diseases or your depression or your debt crisis or your divorce BUT YOU KNOW WHAT. Those are hard problems to solve. These pancakes can help with one thing.
Knowing what to eat in the morning when you don’t feel like getting up.
You raise your hand, “Um, teacher, isn’t that just depression?”
Another raises their hand, “Isn’t that just a fancy word for feeling bummed out?”
Bitch it might be but I might just be sad and you know what, the first step to getting better is eating so I can take my meds so then I can go to work so then I can make money so then I can afford therapy and food and doctors and it’s a cycle, bitch.
Perhaps you’re like me. Still a bitch, just a sad one. A sad bitch. Sad bitch, if you will. You still gotta live boo. And these pancakes will help!
They are tasty, they are marginally good for you, and they look silly while you’re making them which personally, helps me a lot.
These are chonky bois. The chonkiest. If you like them big, if you like them chonky, you will like these.
On top of that they are dairy free! I suppose you could make them with dairy (with some key changes) but I still quite enjoy them. Of course I am lactose intolerant so you’re really just taking my word for it.
I have made this recipe before, and it is adapted from a recipe I found on Pinterest. If you want to find the original recipe, go to Simply Whisked and look up Extra Fluffy Dairy Free Pancakes.
If you’ve been reading this blog for the last week that it has been up, then you will already know what kind of flour I used. It’s a tasty flour, builds up your bones, makes you want to live on a farm with your cats (Just me? Huh. Surprising.) It’s whole wheat!
Whole wheat has this delicious, almost malty sweet flavor that I find white flour does not have. Whenever possible, I go for whole wheat.
I also chose an alternative route as far as sugar. I chose to go with turbinado sugar. And it’s not just because I don’t have white sugar in my pantry!
0kay. You’ve caught me. I don’t have white sugar in my pantry. But I get paid this Friday so I’ll see you then with all my fancy white flour and white sugar.
More seriously, I do prefer turbinado sugar for this recipe. It has a richer, almost caramel-y type flavor that I really enjoy. Of course, I am in the camp that believes pancakes should not be super sweet.
“What!!” You gasp and somehow speak while communicating two (2) exclamation points! “But, but!! It’s pancakes for breakfast!”
Yes! It is breakfast! And it at least should pretend to be healthy and therefore not as sweet. If you’re truly up in arms about this, just double up the sugar and you should be just fine.
As for my dairy free milk, I went with my favorite, my one true love, my eternal love; vanilla soy milk.
Oh! Vain were the days when I scorned soy milk for it’s photoestrogens that would make me more female! How I jeered at it’s health benefits! How I mocked it’s delicious content!
Ahem. More seriously, you would have to be drinking an INSANE amount of soy milk to be developing more breast tissue from soy milk. Or anything soy. So if you were scared like I was, honestly, get over yourself and fall in love.
I wish I was getting paid to say that unfortunately I really just like vanilla soy milk that much. Soy milk companies, hmu. I could do this alllll daaaaayyyyy.
Where was I? Oh right. This isn’t a love poem about soy milk this a food blog. Could possibly work that in though.
For my dairy free butter option, I WAS going to use coconut oil but then SOMEONE (read:me) used too much of the oil and forgot to put it on the shopping list. So I used vegetable shortening instead.
Honestly, I was a little nervous. I had never used vegetable shortening in a pancake recipe and it looked a little weird when I plunked it into my batter. It did not work well. I again remembered stand up mixers, and how I don’t own one. Please, use a stand up mixer.
I pressed on and had a delightful idea. When I was younger, on special days, my siblings and I got to have not just pancakes but BLUEBERRY PANCAKES. We had them so rarely it was like the world’s best breakfast. And can you guess what I had in my fridge this morning?
It’s not bananas, it was blueberries!
As I tapped my feet in glee I remembered a faint, faint memory. One morning my parents were making us pancakes. Greedy for more than I had been offered, like most children, I asked my mom if we could add the fresh blueberries that were in the fridge.
She said no, and that we had to wait until we got canned blueberries (which was always a surprise). I remember being SO disappointed.
BUT! I am an adult now! I can add the fresh blueberries! And lord’t did it look horrific.
Truly, I had created a monster. But as long as it is delicious I really don’t care how it looks and never have.
It was finally time for my favorite part. Cooking (and then immediately eating though it’s too hot and my tongue gets burned but it’s really good so I do it anyway).
Wow. Much Chonk.
Word to the wise–low and slow baby. These bad boys are, as previously mentioned, chonky and therefore need a LONG time to cook. I did about 3-5 minutes per side. Eventually I did start spreading the batter out more instead of just plopping it down and that sped up the cooking time by a minute.
I made another mistake (big surprise, I know). I was on my last pancake, so close to being done when I felt it. The need. My morning need. I think we all know what I’m talking about. The waking ritual. The morning office with the porcelain throne. The coffee kickstarter. Need I say more?
I will, because I’ve clearly regressed into a ten year old. Poop. WE ALL DO IT OKAY. And I needed to go right then, right there. Obviously not right there, I have my own porcelain throne. But my pancake was cooking, what could I do?
I made the best decision I could under that kind of pressure. I turned off the stove and I ran y’all, when I tell y’all I ran, cats were running out of the way as I went to my safe place to do the deed.
I thought I went fast enough. But when I came back my pancake was burnt. There was a great sadness as I placed it on top of my stack. And let me tell you, a burnt pancake is not a good pancake.
Don’t do it. Not even once.
Just don’t.
As for my judgements: that last pancake was definitely tough and not as good as the other two. Really three, but I gobbled up the first one so there isn’t a picture of it.
Oh, you thought I wasn’t going to mention my mom again in this post? Thou art mistaken, for as always, she was right after all. Canned blueberries, or at least blueberries in a sweet sauce would have improved this recipe. Even though I am not a fan of a super sweet breakfast, this could stand to be a little sweeter.
Overall, 3 out of 4 pancakes turned out well and that’s a passing grade, which is how it works in school, which has informed how I view the world, wait guys you’re saying the world isn’t like school at all and there aren’t grades? I need more pancakes.
Ingredients:
- 1.5 cups of whole wheat flour
- 1 tablespoon of turbinado sugar
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- .5 teaspoon salt
- 1.25 cup of vanilla soy milk
- 3 tablespoons of vegetable shortening
- 1 egg
- Optional:
- 1 cup of canned blueberries
- 1 cup of sliced bananas
- .5 sliced walnuts
- 1 cup of chocolate chips
- Optional:
Directions:
- Mix dry ingredients in bowl together.
- Add in wet ingredients.
- If using optional ingredients, slowly mix in at the end.
- Heat a pan on low with olive oil. When the pan feels warm to your hand, add batter.
- Batter will not spread out by itself. The chonkier the batter, the longer it will take to cook.
- Let batter cook on each side for 3-5 minutes.
- Serve and enjoy!
Fuck Me Up Softly (With Food) 