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I’m not sure what kind of Wednesday you may have had, but if it wasn’t a particularly good one, perhaps a cheerful story of pancakes will be the perfect thing to lift your spirits. Because other than a plate of waffles, who hates pancakes?

Let’s go back to Monday. It wasn’t a bad day, per say, but as the day that sets the tone for the rest of the week, it wasn’t the best either. I was wandering through Giant Eagle, picking up milk and bread, and contemplating what I wanted to eat when I got home, a veggie burger or a veggie chicken patty. Not bad, but nothing to “Woo hoo!” over either.

Then it hit me- I have all the ingredients to make pancakes- have had, to be honest- but I was missing syrup. Who cares if most people don’t make pancakes at 8 p.m. on a Monday night- I was making pancakes, dammit. And no box pancakes either- from scratch. Hooray, homemade!

So I go to get syrup and I’m overwhelmed with the artificial choices. If there was one thing my daddy spoiled me with growing up, it was 100% Vermont maple syrup. I’ve learned to tolerate Aunt Jemima and the gang, but when it comes to my Monday night special? It’s the real stuff or bust.

Over $8 for 12 ounces. This me giving it my “Why are you so expensive?!” face.

Dry ingredients.

Dry + wet ingredient close up. Can you feel the excitement?!

The spatula! In the bowl! Mixing!

OMG IT’S BUBBLING TIME TO FLIP!!!

Awww, didn’t mean to burn it. Next one will be perfect.

Um, best out of three?

It was at this point that the smoke detector started beeping. It’s close to the stove and is pretty sensitive (it beeps even when I don’t burn food), so I figured after a few seconds or so, it would stop beeping, like it normally does.

Still beeping.

Still beeping.

Still beeping.

Still beeping.

At this point, I’m standing on a creaky dining room chair, swearing at the smoke detector as I press buttons in vain to shut it up. It stopped it’s constant beeeeeep, but continued to let out a single beep every 30 seconds for the next few minutes. My punishment for not attending to right away, I suppose.

By the time I was out of batter, I had gotten much better at anticipating them. No more burnt ones.

However, as you can tell from the pictures, the batter was incredibly thick. I have my theories:

1) I didn’t have regular salt, only kosher, so I used that. Since it’s thicker, thus absorbs more liquid, I probably should have used half what the recipe called for.
2) When I told my parents about making pancakes and how thick they were, my dad said I overwhipped them (“No more than 10 whips. I watch Alton Brown.”). I did stir them a lot, but only because I noticed the butter kept clumping. It was pretty well softened, so I’m thinking maybe the kosher salt had something with it, possibly.
3) The recipe said to sift the dry ingredents and since I don’t have a sifter, I just shock them around a little and called it a day.

Any thoughts/theories welcome.

Even though it was a pain in the ass and took longer than I wanted it to take, making homemake pancakes was pretty awesome. I suggest you do the same.