Breakfast for Dinner

Tonight the littlest man asked for pancakes for dinner. I did this randomly last week and the look on his face was priceless. He was so excited. So when he asked for it tonight, I figured I can get dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow out of the way. I essentially use the buttermilk pancake recipe out of the Joy of Cooking. I love this book, I got it for the first Christmas after Shinerman and I were married from my mother-in-law. I use it so much that I rarely put it away.

I usually put vanilla extract in there, but we had some orange sections I needed to get rid of, so I decided to use those instead. It turned out well, just a hint of orange in the after taste. I think that next time I would add in some orange zest and see how that goes. When I have blueberries I add those in at the stove. If you sprinkle them on after you pour the batter in the pan, you avoid any crushing or juiciness in the batter - plus you get to decide how many you want!

The littlest man helped, of course. He's gotten much better at measuring, he doesn't fling the measuring cup up out of the canister as if it's empty, thus spilling {insert ingredient here} all over the counter. He's also able to name the ingredients, including the baking powder and baking soda.

You can use regular milk for this recipe, but I highly recommend trying the buttermilk. If you use regular milk, skip the baking soda.

Orange Pancakes

1 1/2 cups flour

3 tbl sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups buttermilk

3 tbl butter, melted

2 large eggs

3-4 tbl fresh squeezed orange juice

Whisk dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk wet ingredients together. To make sure the butter doesn't seize when you mix it in with the cold milk, mix in a little bit of milk in with the melted butter. This will make sure they are closer to the same temperature. Pour wet ingredients into dry, whisking until just combined - as Alton Brown says, lumps are ok!

I heat a comal (a small flat round griddle) on med-low heat sprayed with a bit of olive oil, then use a 1/4 cup measuring cup to pour the batter onto the pan. Cook until the top of the pancake has a few popped bubbles and then flip to cook the other side.

These are so yummy that I only have a few left over each time, the littlest man has been known to gobble down 4-5 in one sitting. I always want to have enough left over so that I can freeze some for breakfast, but usually it's only a couple left to freeze. You have a couple of options to freeze any leftover pancakes. I usually stack them, separated with wax paper and put them in a bag in the freezer. Or you can put them on a cookie sheet in your freezer, then when they are frozen just put them in a bag. You won't have any sticking together with either of these methods. I guess using wax paper creates more waste, though...