Recipe: Amazingly Good Yogurt Pancakes

Amazingly Good Yogurt Pancakes
Newsgroup posting by Brian Reid (1985)

Cooks like to show off by making fancy glamorous recipes to serve to their friends by candle light. Here is a simple ordinary recipe to serve to your family for breakfast in the morning. I love pancakes and I make many varieties and I am an inveterate experimenter. This recipe is the one I have developed over the years to replace buttermilk pancakes because I never have buttermilk on hand in the refrigerator like my grandmother did. I made this recipe this very morning with blueberries in it. I do have yogurt in my fridge, though, and the yogurt can substitute for the buttermilk.

Baking Powder and Yogurt Pancakes
Serves 4-6

5 large eggs or 6 medium eggs
1 1/4 cups milk
8 oz Dannon plain yogurt (other brands might require different amounts)
1/2 cup vegetable oil (or less for dieters; but use at least 2 Tablespoons)
2 1/3 cups white flour (measure carefully, after sifting).
4 teaspoons of baking powder
1 tablespoon of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Preheat griddle and oil very, very lightly. Separate the eggs; beat the yolks in a bowl big enough to hold the whole recipe. Add the yogurt and beat again; add the milk and oil and beat again. Rinse the egg beater.

In a separate bowl, mix all the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt). Sift together. I use a flour sifter for this, but if you insist on measuring your flour without sifting it even though I told you to sift it, then you can maybe use a wire whip to blend the dry ingredients. This step is very important so don't skip it or scrimp on it, because it evenly distributes the small amounts of baking powder and sugar and salt among the large amount of flour.

Using a clean eggbeater (no traces of egg yolk or cooking oil on it), beat the egg whites until they are fluffy. Now dump the dry ingredient mixture into the big bowl containing the yolk/milk/yogurt mixture, stir for about 2 seconds just to get the dry ingredients under the surface of the liquid, and then dump the beaten egg whites into the big bowl. Now beat this mixture lightly and slowly (I use a fork, but a wire whip will do if you are careful) until it is more or less uniform. If you beat too much, or too fast, then all the gluten in the flour will stick together like bread dough and the pancakes will be gummy. Don't worry about lumps; if had you sifted your flour like I told you to, you wouldn't have them anyhow, and if you try to get rid of them you will overbeat the batter.

Now they are ready to cook. I like to put fresh blueberries in them after I pour them on the griddle. Make sure that your maple syrup is hot and that your butter is soft. You can heat syrup in the microwave or you can heat it by sticking the syrup jar in a pan of boiling water.

This same recipe also makes really good waffles, but if you are going to make waffles, you shouldn't cut back on the oil; if you are dieting, then stick to pancakes.