Sunday, November 20, 2011

Homemade Pancake Mix

When I make pancakes (a couple of times per month), I usually make them from scratch. This is mostly because John never willingly ate pancakes until he discovered them at The Flying Biscuit restaurant. I came home from that fateful day, found a recipe that recreated the flavor and texture, and John has been a fan of my homemade pancakes since!

But I do keep a bag of store-bought pancake mix around for when we want pancakes and I'm rushing around or feeling lazy. This morning Mary asked for pancakes and I used up my pancake mix. I thought to myself that I would add pancake mix to my grocery list, but was then inspired: why couldn't I just make my own mix? Maybe there is a reason I don't know about, so I tried it.

I put in all the dry ingredients of my favorite recipe into jars, tripling the recipe.

And I wrote instructions on the jars of how to assemble the mix with wet ingredients. (It occurs to me that, if one wanted, one could even use dry milk powder in the mix, then just add water, egg, and oil.)

I imagine that I could keep up with this with virtually no extra time: These mixes will get me through three pancake mornings. Then the next time I want to make pancakes, I could get out all the ingredients, make a giant batch (say, quadrupling), cook one share, and put the remaining three shares into the jars and put them away.

5 comments:

  1. Cool idea. I was a devotee of homemade buttermilk pancakes for years... Then someone made me hungry jack pancakes that tasted exactly the same and it popped my bubble. Haven't made them since... But i do have several boxes of hungry jack in the garage!

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  2. Christine: I love Krusteaz mix myself. But I ended up switching to homemade because John would throw up eating normal pancakes, but he likes the very chewy texture of an oatmeal pancake at The Flying Biscuit. So now I use this recipe:

    http://allrecipes.com/recipe/brown-sugar-oatmeal-pancakes/detail.aspx

    I use all white wheat flour and throw in some extras, like flax and wheat germ. I use whole milk because I never have buttermilk on hand.

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  3. That's a great idea! I have a recipe I always use, because I really don't like the taste of boxed mix. I have never tried one with brown sugar. I'm going to give your recipe a try sometime this week. Another take away for me is that I need to purchase some wheat flour. It would be perfect for most things except white cakes.

    Thanks for the great tip!

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  4. Ashley: Yes, I read up on "white wheat flour" when it first began being marketed here in America because I thought it couldn't possibly be nutritious. But it is just as nutritious as whole wheat!

    http://www.kingarthurflour.com/flour/home.html

    And it really does taste like white! Perhaps it is slightly denser, such that it wouldn't work as perfectly in a light and fluffy cake as all-purpose or pastry flour. But I now use white wheat in all my bread, cookies, and other baked goods.

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  5. My sis in law makes this kind of stuff and gifts it at Christmas. I never thought of making it myself...

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