Big Pancake doesn’t want you to know this, but making pancakes is easier than you think. There are dozens of recipes, and we couldn’t agree on the best one, so we’re including a bunch of them. Pick whichever you can make with the ingredients you’ve already got in the kitchen.

Remember that time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so, and you can eat pancakes for any meal.

Core Ingredients

Cooking oil or butter or margarine
Flour
Water
Eggs or baking powder or yeast & sugar (depends on the recipe)

Preparation I: Irish-Style Pancake Batter

These make a flatter pancake than American-style fluffy pancakes. A more refined, European pancake. Something heading in the direction of a crepe, but not closing the distance.

We include weights, since that’s how the recipe was contributed, but if you don’t have a scale you could try 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of water. If you want it thinner, add more water. If you want it thicker, add more flour. Write the quantities you like best in the margins. Personalize this book.

Mix together:
Flour (100 g)
Water (300 g a.k.a. 300 mL)
1 raw egg

until they turn into pancake batter.

These pancakes are as flat as the spaceship that crashed into the asteroid in Alinda.

Preparation II: “Two of Everything” Fluffy Pancakes

Mix together:
Flour (2 cups)
Water (2 cups)
Baking powder (2 teaspoons)
2 raw eggs

until they turn into pancake batter.

Let it sit for a few minutes for the baking powder to do its thing. Make yourself a cup of coffee.

Preparation III: “Even Fluffier” Fluffy Pancakes (Can be Veganized)

Mix together:
Flour (2 cups)
Water (1.5 cups)
Baking powder (3 teaspoons)
2 raw eggs (optional)
Dollop of vegetable oil

until they turn into pancake batter.

Let it sit for a few minutes for the baking powder to do its thing. Make yourself a cup of tea.
You might need to play around with the amount of liquid—add a bit more if it’s too thick. You can always add more flour if it ends up too liquidy. Repeat this process forever to end up with infinite pancake batter.

Preparation IV: Vegan Pancakes with Yeast

These are a bit more complicated, but we didn’t want to leave vegans out of the pancake adventures. The previous recipe can be veganized deliciously, but this one doesn’t even call for eggs.

Mix together:

Dry instant yeast (2 teaspoons)
Sugar (2 teaspoons)
Room temperature water* (2 cups)

* Yeast will grow best in slightly warm water. They’ll grow a bit slower in cold
water, but they’ll get there in the end. Boiling water will kill them, and then they
can’t work their yeasty magic.

Let it sit for a few minutes for the yeast to do its thing. Make yourself a cup of hot chocolate.

Add flour (2 cups).
Mix until it turns into pancake batter.

Preparation V: Pancake Mix from a Box

If you’re dealing with something like depression, pre-mixed ingredients can be a gift. They’re more expensive than the individual ingredients. Our society makes it financially costly to be physically or mentally unwell because it doesn’t consider human life to be intrinsically valuable. We have opinions on our society.

If you do buy boxed mix, we highly recommend getting the version where all you add is water and butter. If you’re adding eggs and milk, you might be paying four times as much for flour in a box. Don’t waste your money on the Pancake Industrial Complex.

Mix together:

Whatever the box suggests until it turns into pancake batter.

Preparation: Do This No Matter What

Turn on medium heat and let the pan warm up a bit. Or not, if you’re hungry and rushing.
Add cooking oil to the frying pan.
Add a scoop of batter to the hot frying pan. Some people use a ladle. We use the cup measure we got dirty when measuring the flour. Save your- self washing the ladle.
You wanna cook the pancake some of the way through so it’s got struc- tural integrity, then flip it and cook the bottom. How do you know when it’s time to flip? Crepe-style enthusiasts tell us to swirl the pancake batter around the pan, flip, and serve. Fluffy-pancake connoisseurs speak of waiting for bubbles to appear in the pancake, then flipping and waiting a minute or two. Personally, we adopt a “trial and error” approach.**

** For whatever reason, the first couple of pancakes never turn out as well as the later ones. To paraphrase a famous chef, “The pan needs to get to know the pancakes, and the pancakes need to get to know the pan.”

Variations: Batter

Enhance your pancake experience by adding these.

If you substitute milk or plant milk for the water, you’ll get a richer pancake. This only works if you have milk in the house, which sounds unlikely.
Add frozen fruit to the pancake batter. Don’t defrost it first.
Add fresh fruit to the pancake batter. If you add fresh blueberries to the pancake batter, they will turn into weapons-grade pockets of molten juice. You have been warned.
Add a pinch of salt to the batter.
Add 3 tablespoons of sugar to the batter.
Add a dollop of vanilla. Or two.

Variations: Toppings

Peasant: lemon and sugar
Layperson: nutella
Gymfreak: peanut butter and strawberry jam
Tennis player: sliced strawberries and cream
Canadian: maple syrup
British: golden syrup
Spiced: cinnamon and sugar
Loaded: yogurt, nuts and defrosted frozen fruit
Dutch-style: cheese and apple slices
Savoury: hummus, fried mushrooms, and spinach fried with cumin. May- be with a fried egg on top?
Any or all of the above. Maybe not all at once.