Simply Perfect Pancakes (21)

First let's talk about how many attempts it took for me to figure out how to make these pancakes correctly: FOUR. That's right. I can knock out fancy breads, but these pancakes really tripped me up. Here's what happened. 

First attempt: I tried to whisk the eggs and milk with a hand mixer. I didn't think we were going for stiff peaks here, since the yolk was present. So I thought the little mixer would be just fine. Wrong. These pancakes didn't turn out well at all. First mistake, first lesson. Whip the heck out of the eggs. When I did it right, the foam was at least 3/4 of the way up the Kitchenaid bowl. 

Second attempt: Passed the whipping hurdle, mixed the dry ingredients, and per the instructions in step 3, I dumped them in the egg foam and tried to gently fold them together with a spatula. What resulted was a lumpy disaster and terrible pancakes. Second mistake, second lesson. Don't dump all the dry ingredients in at once. 

Third attempt: I decided to treat this like a foam cake. When I got to step 3, I sifted a small portion of the dry ingredients over the eggs, just until the top was covered, and gently folded it in. I repeated this until all the dry ingredients were incorporated.  It took about 4-5 repetitions. While this got rid of the lump problem, it also got rid of all the air from the foam.  Third mistake, third lesson. Don't overwork the batter trying to incorporate dry ingredients.

In my final successful attempt, I whipped the eggs on high for a full 3 minutes with a whisk attachment in my stand mixer. Then I sifted 1/3 of the dry ingredients on the batter, and continued to mixed in the mixer (on low) for just a few revolutions--a little less than 10 seconds. I repeated this with the second, and  also the final portions of the dry ingredients. There were still a few lumps, but there was still a lot of foam too. I walked away and left it for 15 minutes, as specified in the recipe.  Success!

As you can see from the scores, I was the only person who didn't love these pancakes. I thought they were too eggy. Too salty. Too flat. I wish they had vanilla. I pointed these things out to my husband, and he said "You wish they were cake." Now there's a breakfast idea I can get behind. 

Scores (out of 5): Dustin: 4 Breanna: 2.5 Michael: 5 James: 5  Andrew: 4.5  Total  21/25

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/simply-perfect-pancakes-recipe