– Robert Paul
My kids love chocolate. Plain and simple. They inherited a few things from me: blue eyes, petite stature, and the love of books, coffee, unsweetened tea, bread, and chocolate. They also love breakfast foods at any time of the day - especially homemade Buttermilk Biscuits and buttermilk pancakes. Hmmm, maybe they would like buttermilk? Probably not. I won't drink it, but I love to cook with it. I don't necessarily dislike the taste of buttermilk, it tastes like plain yogurt to me, but the thick texture just about gags me. That texture and tang, however, are what make buttermilk particularly fabulous for baking and coating meat (like Chicken) for frying. This recipe is a smoosh. I took a recipe for chocolate chip muffins and combined it with my hands-down favorite homemade pancake recipe and this was the result. The pancakes come out perfectly every single time, and my kids ask for them before the first four are even halfway done. I always tear one in half for them as an appetizer before all the pancakes are done. This morning my son (almost 3) asked when the "flap cakes" would be done as soon as I had the first batch on the griddle.
Chocolate Chocolate Pancakes
1 1/2 cups self rising flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 egg
1 1/4 cup buttermilk -OR- 2 Tb lemon juice + 1 1/8 cup milk
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup miniature chocolate chips
1. Mix dry ingredients together in a medium mixing bowl.
2. Blend milk, oil, and egg together with a fork in a glass measuring cup. If you do not have buttermilk, simply measure 2 Tb lemon juice into the cup and add enough milk to make 1 1/4 cups. Milk with fat tends to do better than skim, but skim is all we buy now that our son is almost 3.
5. Stir until there are no dry spots, but do not try to get the lumps out of the batter. If you overmix the batter your pancakes will be flat, chewy, and dense instead of puffy, tender, and fluffy.
6. Let the batter sit while you heat up your griddle or pan to medium (5). This will allow the buttermilk to do its thang and create the perfect texture we're aiming for.
7. When making pancakes, cooking spray, a medium width flipper, and a 1/4 cup ice cream scoop are my best friends.
8. Once your griddle/pan is hot - just hold your hand above it and if it feels hot it's hot - spray it with cooking spray and dollop four pankey-doodle-all-the-days onto the surface. Be sure to space them far enough apart that when they spread as they cook they still will not touch. If you prefer smaller pancakes, you can use a 2 Tb scoop.
9. Once the tops form bubbles and the sides have lost some of the sheen of wet batter, it is time to check them. Very carefully test the edge of a pancake to see if you can get the flipper under it without smooshing it all up. If you can get the flipper under it, carefully lift the edge to check the color on the cooked side. If it is darker brown than the top, drier, and has some borderline blackish places it is definitely ready to flip.
10. Flip them one at a time, in the order that you put them on the pan. I work clockwise from the back left-hand side of the pan. After you flip them, the second side will not take as long to cook. Check it after a couple of minutes. When the pancake is firm and browned on the second side, remove it to a plate. Then turn down your pan 1/2 to 1 full mark (ie, from 5 to either 4 or 4 1/2), or the following batches will burn, baby, burn.
11. Continue this process until you have used all the batter. I don't remember exactly how many pancakes I made, but I'm thinking it was somewhere in the range of 14-18 pancakes. You can also place a cookie sheet in the oven and turn it on WARM, place finished pancakes on the cookie sheet and tent a piece of foil on top until you get them all done.
12. An alternative is to use Reese's Peanut Butter Chips and White Chocolate Morsels in place of the mini chocolate chips.
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