My Neighbor’s Recipe for Perfect Chocolate Chip Pancakes
From combining the ingredients, to frying the batter, to sitting down to enjoy them, pancakes are the perfect way to share a long, lazy morning with your loved ones. That’s why I like to wake up early, make myself a nice cup of coffee, and watch my neighbors through the window while they do just that. As far as I can tell, it’s their Sunday morning ritual. So watching them has become my Sunday morning ritual! Because these mornings have come to mean so much to me during quarantine, I thought I’d share my neighbor’s perfect pancake recipe.
Dry ingredients:
1½ cups All Purpose flour or Bread flour, depending on if your son used the rest of the AP for an art project that’s still making a mess of your den
3 unnecessarily massive tablespoons sugar
1¾ teaspoons baking powd… soda? No, powder
1 teaspoon salt, measured in your palm for some reason
Wet ingredients:
1 cup of some fancy-looking kind of milk—the kind that’s got crazy lettering on the side and an entire essay on the back
3 tablespoons butter, melted, then the microwave needs to be wiped down
2 eggs
1 hearty ‘glug’ vanilla
Start with a big mixing bowl, a whisk, and a gentle kiss on the back of your wife’s neck. If your daughter is already awake, a kiss on the top of her head is both expected and welcome.
Ask your son, who’s sitting at the kitchen table watching Family Guy, which I personally think he’s maybe a bit too young to be watching, to grab the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt from the pantry. He’ll pretend like he doesn’t hear you, so just keep asking louder.
When he accidentally brings baking soda instead of baking powder, belittle him.
Combine all the dry ingredients, including baking powder, which you irately fetched yourself, in the big mixing bowl. Be careful to argue about whether or not leveling the measurements matters.
Now, with a hollow smile that doesn’t include your eyes, start cracking eggs into a small bowl.
You’ll want to spend a while whisking the eggs so they’re fluffy, and so you don’t have to help with any Sunday morning sweeping.
Add the milk, melted butter, and vanilla to the eggs. While stirring, comment on how it’s cool that the butter forms crystals when it touches the cold milk—even though nobody is within earshot.
When your daughter comes back from sitting on the floor playing with your disgusting long-haired cat, have her mix while you quickly add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. This step works best if you ignore that she hasn’t washed her hands basically ever.
Let the batter sit for about 30 minutes, making sure to be extremely stern about that unnecessarily specific amount of time.
Once the batter has rested, double task by melting some butter on a large griddle pan at medium heat while also suggesting how the pancakes would be ready sooner if somebody started setting the table.
Drop medium spoonfuls of batter onto the hot skillet. Feel free to let the batter run a bit on the skillet because the kids go nuts for double pancakes, and when they smile, they include their eyes in that naive, childish sort of way. You and I? We know better.
Ask if anyone wants chocolate chips in their pancakes, to which everyone—including your wife as she walks into the kitchen—will reply, “Yes please! Pancakes are just vehicles for chocolate chips, daddy!” in a staggered, discordant unison.
Turn the heat down while everyone takes turns adding chocolate chips and competing for the silliest (ie. ugliest) designs, which include way more chocolate chips than I personally would ever let children eat for breakfast.
Reduce the heat to low so the chocolate doesn’t burn after you flip the pancakes. You’ll know they’re ready to be flipped once the kids have been maniacally giggling and shouting, “are they ready? Are they ready?” for about 2 minutes.
Remove the pancakes from the griddle and bring them to the table while everyone talks about what they’re excited for in the upcoming week, reminisces about your family vacation to the Wisconsin Dells, quotes their favorite TV shows, and starts grabbing from the sugary mountain of breakfast you all made together. It’s like, so much sugar. How are you even raising your kids? Even I could do better, and I’m just a stranger sitting next door sipping coffee completely alone and peering through your smudgy cobwebbed kitchen window from the time I wake up till the time I go to sleep.