Pancakes

One Sunday morning, I woke up before my brothers (no surprise), decided to make pancakes (semi-surprise), and decided to let my brothers have some (surprise)! They both ate massive bowls of cereal (with peanut butter!) AND three pancakes each.

Pancakes (from The Best Recipe)
Makes about eight 3-inch pancakes

Ingredients:


1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup buttermilk (substitute 3/4 cups room-temperature normal milk and 1 tablespoon white vinegar or lemon juice if you don't have buttermilk. Let it stand for 5 minutes.)
1/4 cup milk (plus extra if batter is too thick)
1 large egg, separated
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
Vegetable oil for brushing griddle
Blueberries, chocolate chips, coconut, or any topping of choice (optional)

Instructions:


Whisk dry ingredients together in a medium bowl.

Riveting.

Pour buttermilk and milk into a 2-cup measuring cup. Whisk egg white into milk mixture.

Mix yolk and butter together, then dump into milk.

Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients all at once and mix until just combined.

Heat griddle or skillet over medium-high heat. Brush with oil.

When water dripped onto griddle sizzles, pour slightly less than 1/4 cup of batter onto griddle.

Don't crowd the pancakes; they will spread. When pancake tops start to bubble, drop toppings on pancake.

Flip and cook until bottom has browned, 1-2 minutes.

The two burners we use are different sizes, so they cook unevenly sometimes. Hmph.

Flip onto plate or platter. Serve or place in 200-degree oven to keep warm.

One is blueberry, the other is chocolate-coconut.

These are fantastic pancakes. Once you've had these, you will never go back to Bisquick. I'm serious. These are so delicious, especially with fresh blueberries or chocolate chips, that you'll want breakfast for every meal. Amazing with maple syrup, they are also good with butter. Real maple syrup is the best. I lived on Hungry Jack for a long time and am only just now adjusting to real syrup. Do yourself a favor and use the real stuff. It's more expensive but you need less because it's so naturally sweet.
They are very fluffy, but if you want them even fluffier, The Best Recipe recommends beating the egg white into stiff peaks and folding it into the finished batter. I recommend always doubling pancake recipes; what doesn't get eaten can be easily frozen and toasted for a quick breakfast.
Unfortunately, with two teenage brothers, there are never any leftovers.

Chocolate Caramel Mug Cake

Here's a revelation I had a couple of days ago: It's possible to have chocolate cake in less than 5 minutes.
You probably are thinking, "No way! That's not possible!"
Well, it is. You use the microwave.
Now you're thinking, "Blasphemy! No cake can be made in the microwave and still taste good!"
Well, it can be. You mix batter for an individual cake and pour it in a mug and and bake it in the microwave. And it's good.
"..."
Exactly.

Here's how, using NomNomBlingBling's recipe found through the Huffington Post:

Chocolate Caramel Mug Cake

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

The bananas lurking in the background are not part of the recipe.

1 beaten egg
3 tablespoons skim milk
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 salted caramels (If you don't have salted caramels, press a few grains of sea salt into the tops of normal caramels. BOOM! Instant fancy salted caramels.)
1/8 cup chocolate chips (The original recipe doesn't call for this. Look below to see why I added it.)


Preparation:

Mix flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, salt, egg, milk, and oil in a bowl.

Me being a rebel and mixing it in the mug

Pour into a coffee mug and drop caramels in center one at a time.

"Noo!!" *glub glub glub*

Microwave on high for one minute and 15 seconds. It will rise above the mug edge and appear to be boiling over, but don't panic–it's not. By the time the batter gets to the top of the mug, it will have turned into cake.

It took a lot of willpower to leave it in when it rose.

If it's not cooked through, microwave for 7-15 seconds more.

Despite being made in a microwave, this cake was great! It was moist and tasty, although I feel that there could have been a more intense chocolate flavor. That's why I added the 1/8 cup of chocolate chips to the recipe. The texture is a little different than a conventional chocolate cake–it's slightly rubbery. Also, the caramels sank to the very bottom and melted, so most of it was just chocolate cake. It may have been because I took a bunch of pictures before putting it in the microwave, giving them time to sink all the way to the bottom. Along with the caramel at the bottom, there was a big flour pocket because I was too lazy to mix it in a bowl like the recipe said and just mixed it in the mug. Bad idea.

The bottom quarter of the cake had streaks of flour and the side of the mug had batter on it from the whisk.
Anyway, this cake is perfect if you get struck by a sudden chocolate craving and don't want to turn the oven on–or just can't wait long enough for a cake to bake. (It was above 90 degrees outside the day I made this. It's not fun to have a 350 degree oven spewing heat inside an already hot house. Thus, the mug cake.)