Nom-Able

Growing up, I went through phases when it came to breakfast. As a small child, it was my favorite meal of the day. My usual dinner requests were for scrambled eggs, sausage, pancakes, waffles, or French toast — never all at the same time, obviously — and my mother was only ever happy to oblige, as breakfast is probably the easiest meal of the day to cook. I can still remember with great sadness the first time my father took me to a McDonald’s for lunch and the oil-slicked teenager who apathetically informed us we were too late for breakfast.

There were many such incidents in my life. Luckily, growing up in New Jersey means there’s a plethora of diners within driving distance from any place you might be, and most diners serve at least some breakfast foods 24/7.

It was sometime in my early, precocious pre-teen years that my love of breakfast began to wane, and by the time I was in high school, I’d forgotten the meal all together. I usually slept well past the point of breakfast or brunch on weekends, and at some point, I’d decided that all cooked eggs smell rotten, all pancakes are fattening. The entire point of breakfast was lost, until my senior year of high school when my best friend and I would arrive at school half an hour early for cream cheese and bagels washed down with a bottle of Surge.

Still, without Nanette’s presence to share in chewy, bagel goodness, I usually declined breakfast — or slept right through it.

My sophomore year of college, I again began to explore the idea of breakfast as the perfect compliment to a night of boozing; eating eggs after a particularly drunken evening is still a ritual I carry to this day, and I will — without exception — always wake up craving eggs after a particularly rough night. But it really wasn’t until this past year that I began to look forward to the weekend as a time when I could begin cooking breakfast for my husband and myself, looking forward to the same eggs, chicken sausage, pancakes, waffles, and French toast I loved as a child.

Which brings me to the subject of pancakes.

As far back as I can remember, pancakes came from a box. My grandmother actually started this tradition; completely and utterly impressed by the awesome, newfangled contraption that is a microwave, my first pancakes came out of a little red box from the freezer. They were always perfectly round and uniformly colored golden brown, thus setting an impossible standard for all subsequent pancakes to follow in the most purely superficial way. This being the 1980s, however, microwave meals weren’t exactly at the height of quality — often, the pancakes came out completely uneven with tough rubbery edges and a center that still contained ice crystals.

When my mother quit full-time employment and rescued me from my grandmother’s obsession with microwave foods, I didn’t fare much better. My mother’s first response to pancakes — or anything requiring a flour base — was “Is there a Bisquick recipe for it?” From shortcakes to coffee cake, pancakes to waffles, if that horrible yellow box said it could be done, it would be done. For years, in my mind, most bread and cake-like products had the distinctive baking powder taste of Bisquick.

Then, in the late eighties and early nineties, there was a new invention — shelf-stabilized liquid pancake batter. All my mother had to do was go into a supermarket and grab a yellow bottle marked “Pancake Batter” and she could squeeze out perfectly round (though not perfectly cooked) pancakes for me whenever I wanted them.

It was around this time, I’m sure by pure coincidence, that I stopped eating breakfast.

For the longest time, once I began to rediscover the joys of eating in the morning, I too fell into the trap of the instant pancake batter — especially Wegman’s store brand, which was as simple as adding water and cooking. I could get up, pour a cup of water into two cups of box batter, and have more pancakes than you could ever dream of within ten minutes or so. Sure, they weren’t as good as diner pancakes, but they weren’t has horribly powdery as Bisquick, and by adding water to a powder mix, it sure felt like actual, geniuine cooking.

But then, one day, there was no pancake mix — we’d used it all and hadn’t had a chance to buy any more. I stared at some eggs in the fridge, wondering if those would help me make pancakes, completely unsure of what ingredients were required in pancake making, and whether or not homemade pancakes could be created that were fluffy, golden, and wonderful without any kind of batter.

I closed the refrigerator door and cracked open my copy of New Cook Book (Better Homes and Gardens Test Kitchen) and was dismayed. The recipe only called for one egg (which was a relief, since I only had two in the fridge,) but it also required an entire cup of milk — which I had, but that would leave me without milk for my coffee.

Frustrated, I turned to the only other source I could think of in such desperate times: Vegan with a Vengeance

This, kids, is why you should have at least one vegan cookbook in your home — and if you only get one, please make it this one! Even if you’re not into sustainable eating, even if you’re a meat-and-potatoes kind of household, there will come a day when you need to make pancakes or cupcakes or just a side dish to go with the steak and potatoes you’re doing, and you won’t have an egg in the house. Or you’ll be out of milk. Or whatever. Only a vegan cookbook will save your ass now.

There are several things I learned from Vegan with a Vengeance about pancakes in general, thanks to Isa’s one and a half pages within the book dedicated to making perfect pancakes. The key, of course, is the gluten in the flour — when you add moisture and mix, the gluten binds together — over mix, and the gluten will become elastic (like when you kneed dough) and give you tough pancakes. If you don’t let the gluten rest and “relax” after mixing, it stays tightly bound together and doesn’t give you the lift you know and love in your pancakes. After reading the entire section a few times, I couldn’t wait to give these pancakes a try.

Were they good? Oh hell yes, they were good. While the cinnamon in the recipe is optional, I added it anyway and can’t imagine pancakes without it.

Pancakes

Ingredients
• 1 1/4 c. flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
• 2 tbsp canola oil
• 1/3 c. water
• 1 to 1 1/4 c. plain rice or soy milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp maple syrup

Instructions
1. Oil a large skillet and preheat over medium-high heat about two minutes
2. Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon, if using. In a separate bowl, combine all other ingredients. Adding wet ingredients to dry mix, mix until just combined. Do not overmix.
3. Unofficial 3rd step I’ve added: Let mixture rest ten minutes — during this step, I preheat my skillet.
4. Cook pancakes until browned on the bottom and bubbles form on top, about 4 minutes. Turn the pancakes over and cook until the bottoms are browned and the pancakes are barely firm to the touch. Transfer to individual plates. Repeat with remaining batter, adding more oil to the pan as needed

Note: I usually transfer the pancakes to an oven-safe plate and keep them in a just-warm oven until I’ve finished cooking all the batter and am ready to serve.

Another tip from me to you: use an ice cream scoop to scoop out perfectly round pancakes. Just like the ones from the box!