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basic pancakes
ingredients
1 cup flour + 2 Tbsp. (truthfully, I don't measure this all that carefully; basically you want a slightly rounded cup of flour)
1 tsp. baking powder
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 egg
1 Tbsp. oil
1 cup milk
¼ cup sour cream or yogurt (you can sub with milk if necessary, though the results will be slightly less fluffy)

serves 2
time 20-30 minutes

1 Throw a good-sized skillet on the stove and turn the dial to medium-high. Add a splotch of cooking oil and swirl to coat evenly; sop up excess grease with a paper towel.
2 Meanwhile, place the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl and stir it up with a fork or whisk. In a separate bowl, mix the egg, oil, milk, and sour cream/yogurt, and stir until well combined.
3 Gently whisk the wet mixture into the dry until just incorporated (don't worry too much if you have some small lumps; you don't want to overmix because it'll cause the gluten in the flour to overdevelop, and your pancakes won't have that nice fluffy texture).
4 Test the pan by letting a tiny dollop of batter drop into the pan. If it sizzles and starts to cook, the pan's ready.
5 Pour in some batter -- a soup ladle works dandy for this -- to form a 6-8" round. You'll start to see a few tiny air pockets burble in the dough; eventually, they'll reach the surface to form little holes. When the top of the pancake is covered in little bubbles and holes, flip the pancake with a spatula. (You should find that the bottom of your pancake is a nice golden-brown; if it's sickly pale, up the heat a little for your next try; if it's too dark, lower the heat a bit.) Cook the other side of the pancake for another minute or two, until golden. Give the pancake a taste test. If the pancake seems too fluffy-thick, thin the batter with a splash more of milk; if it's too thin, stir in another tablespoon or so of flour.
6 Repeat step five until you've finished off the batter. To keep your pancakes warm, stack them up on top of each other as you go. Serve with maple syrup - the 100% real stuff, of course.

To make banana pancakes:
Take half a banana -- the riper the better -- and mash it up with a fork in a small bowl. Stir the mashed banana into the batter when you add the wet ingredients to the dry in step three. Cut up the remaining banana into very thin slices. For each pancake, after you've ladled the batter into the pan and the pancake begins to set on the bottom, scatter a few banana slices onto the pancake and gently press them in. Use your spatula to push a little batter over the slices to cover them up (or drizzle a little extra batter on top). Continue cooking as with the plain pancakes.

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waffling | gingerbread pancakes | crepes 101

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