Friday, December 18, 2009

Oat-Whole Wheat Pancakes Made with Improvised Buttermilk

The New York Times has an ongoing series called "Recipes for Health," and this weekend I'm attempting to make these pancakes, but without the blueberries. A weekend with a lot of snow seems like a good time for a breakfast or brunch that takes longer than my usual breakfast of pouring a bowl of Kashi cereal. (I'm also planning to make a simple chicken soup that's based on a Joy of Cooking recipe, plus apple crisp, probably based more on the Food Matters recipe.)

In addition to skipping the blueberries, I'm also not using buttermilk in the pancake batter. We don't keep buttermilk on hand, since it's unlikely we would use a whole container before it would go bad. So I tried a tip I found several places online -- adding "a tablespoon of lemon juice into a cup of milk and letting it sit for about five minutes." Apparently the key thing with the buttermilk is that the acid in it reacts with the baking soda to make the pancakes fluffy. Several websites also say you can use vinegar instead of the lemon juice.

UPDATE: The pancakes turned out ok, although they definitely cook differently than regular pancakes. They do spread out some but they stay a LOT thicker than regular pancakes. The recipe says to drop 3-4 tablespoons' worth at a time into the pan (or on the griddle). That makes HUGE pancakes. More importantly, at that size, they get brown on the bottom while the top is still a bit runny, so you'll get some "splat" in the pan when you flip them over. They still cook up ok -- they just aren't as perfectly round and pretty, if that matters to you. :-)

Instead, I would recommend making them at a smaller size so they cook more evenly. In any case, these pancakes are definitely "a quick, substantial breakfast" as the NYT website says.

NOTE: After you get done making the batter, you're supposed to put it in the refrigerator for at least an hour - and overnight is fine (we refrigerated ours overnight).

Better Half put some dried cranberries in one of the pancakes as it cooked, and he liked it.

(photo credit: New York Times)

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