Simple Pleasures: Pancakes

I love breakfast. I would eat breakfast food for every meal and sometimes I do. But during the week, breakfast is nothing fancy. So one of my ideas for this blog was to take myself out to breakfast on a work day. Meaning I would have to get up early, go to a restaurant (alone!), and order pancakes.

Why pancakes? Because I love them, but I’m totally intimated by them. I just don’t know how to flip them and how often to flip them and how to get them to be just the right golden color on the outside, but fully cooked on the inside. I distinctly remember a sleepover where a friend and I tried to make pancakes and they were so runny in the middle and burnt on the outside that even my dog wouldn’t eat them. So as a result, I just never attempt to make them myself. Instead, I have perfected the art of the waffle. Which was easy because my best friends gave me a Mickey Mouse waffle iron for my college graduation.

I wasn’t planning to follow through on my breakfast plan this week, but then I got canceled on. Which I usually love because it’s this gift of time you weren’t expecting and you know you can see the friend again later. (Though this friend was in from out of town so it was more of a bummer. Still I get it–her baby had jet lag so he was in charge of her time that morning!) So that meant I was up, dressed, and thinking about pancakes with two hours to spare before I had to go to work.  I seriously considered taking myself to Sarabeth’s for lemon ricotta pancakes (and oh man was I tempted!), but instead I decided to take my routine maintenance one step further and make pancakes myself.

I used a buttermilk pancake mix to make the process a little easier. It needed more ingredients than I was expecting. So I think what I added was like 3/4s of each additional ingredient. Great start! And then I added mini chocolate chips, because duh. I then vigilantly watched them for the “bubbles” that are supposed to be the magical “flip these now!” sign:

And (after the first not so elegant flip) it actually went okay. Like they kinda looked like the right color when I flipped them. And I only burned myself on the side of the frying pan once. And even more than okay was that the mix made eight pancakes. So now I have leftovers in the freezer for future (easier) work day breakfasts! But oh man, what a simple pleasure to treat yourself to a pancake breakfast on a work day. I think this is what they mean when they say “Fri-yay!”