Happy Sunday – with pancakes!
Pancakes are a Sunday dish, because they are delicious and lush.
Yes, they are made from a few basic ingredients and are cake from a pan, but: they also require lots of patience in front of the stove, which is why they are most often served on days off.
As is a common joke in pop culture: the first pancake hardly ever turns out great. After this hurdle is overcome, the remainder of pancake prep is spent re-adjusting the heat between flips of each pancake. For some reason, pancakes burn or come out undercooked real easy. They just don’t make themselves! Also, they require quite a bit of oil. However, time invested to cook pancakes is entirely worth it. You are rewarded with a crunchy edge and a fluffy, sweet crumb. Plus, you can indulge in pancakes with a myriad of ingredients: from maple syrup to Nutella to blueberries – it’s sweetness all around!
Today is a truly wonderful Sunday here in Cologne. We’ve been invited to an elaborate breakfast with friends. Of course, I would like to make a contribution to the table. And what better dish to bring than fluffy, delicious, golden buttermilk pancakes?
Right? I used to make these, almost exactly this way, before I went gluten-free. You can prepare these pancakes a day ahead and re-heat them just before serving. They’ll be just as good as fresh – no one need know that you slept in! This is especially convenient on Sundays marking the start of daylight savings, when you need to get up even earlier. I may love my friends, but I love my (currently very sparse) sleep even more! A saleswoman at Douglas (a chain that sells make-up and perfume) tried to sell me a revitalizing eye-mask the other day. She eyed my pram and said “You know, so that you can look fresh despite not getting sufficient sleep”. Thank goodness all the people in my life who truly matter keep telling me that I look great. So, I laughed it off and went home without the magic eye-mask. I could, because I know that I am getting a whole lot more sleep on most nights than the saleswoman suspected. And even if I wasn’t: after indulging in some of these pancakes I may as well have!
Fluffy Gluten-free Buttermilk Pancakes
Ingredients (for about ten large pancakes):
2 ½ cups gluten-free flour (I used one half Harina de Reposteria by AdPan and one half ReWe frei von-flour mix)
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp gluten-free helpers
2 tbsp sugar
500ml buttermilk (if you don’t have any, and are okay with sligthly less fluffy pancakes, you can also make your own using lemon juice and milk or replace the buttermilk with joghurt)
3 eggs (large)
¼ cup vegetable oil, plus more for frying
Preparation:
Place all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix a little with a whisk. Add all the liquid ingredients.
Whisk gently until the batter has been formed. It will gently remove itself from the bowl on its own (due to the oil).
Heat a dash of vegetable oil in a small pan. Ladle in a bit of batter and gently form into a round pancake.
Wait until the edges are golden brown and turn the pancake over after about a minute and half.
Fry until the second side is also golden brown and the inside of the pancake is cooked. Remove pancake from pan and repeat process with the remainder of the batter, greasing the pan between pancakes.
Enjoy warm and with lots of delicious toppings!