They come in many shapes and sizes, from silver dollars to the Uncle Buck (For you youngsters, that’s a reference to a movie starring the late great John Candy. I’ve included a video for your viewing pleasure.) They’re known by many names, from flapjacks to hotcakes to hoecakes to jonnycakes. Let’s face it–they’re dessert for breakfast. I am, of course, talking about the humble yet amazing pancake.

I’ve been making pancakes for a long time. Decades. Centuries. Millenia. Well, okay, those last two may be a bit of a lie, though I have been making them since the previous millenium, so it’s technically accurate. Through the ages, my tastes have changed, as have my skill level, techniques, equipment, and, to be honest, my attitude about what makes a proper flapjack. I’ll never forget one of my first, completely disastrous, attempts at making them. I had everything I needed–or so I thought. I mixed the milk, flour, baking powder, vanilla, and a touch of sugar. I heated the pan, added oil, and started cooking. They came out a nice brown, just like my mom’s. They seemed a little flat, even by pancake standards, but that was okay. How wrong could I get it? In case you didn’t get the foreshadowing, I oculd get it really wrong. They were inedible. They weren’t even cuttable with a knife, much less a fork. It was then I realized what I’d missed. Any idea what it was? You, way in the back, what do you think? You got it–an egg. I don’t fully understand the science behind it, but a pancake without an egg is basically useful only for patching a hole in your bicycle’s tire.

I’ve since refined my technique and find I make edible pancakes nearly every time nowadays. They aren’t always perfect, but they’re a lot closer a lot more of the time than I used to manage. Part of that is repetition. Another part is better equipment–what you cook them on is important. The quality of my cakes has made the biggest leap, though, since I figured out what’s important and, more critically, not important when it comes to ingredients. I’ll say more about that in a bit. For now, let’s get started with equipment.

To make pancakes, I use a griddle. I actually have two. The one I use at school when I make my students pancakes on Flapjack Friday, is electric. It’s copper clad and, though it’s become discolored over the years, has never stuck even a little. I use just a touch of non-stick spray on it. And I heat to EXACTLY 350 degrees. The key with an electric is to give it time to get up to temperature. My other griddle is a cast iron two-burner griddle my daughter got me for Christmas. It’s still kind of new and I’m working on getting it seasoned well, so it’s way more prone to sticking than the electric. Even more tricky with the cast iron is temperature control. I try to start heating with a medium-low to medium flame at least fifteen to twenty minutes before time to cook. When I don’t do this, I inevitably scorch the pancakes. And once the griddle gets too hot, it takes forever for it to cool off.

The rest of the equipment is really not all that important in terms of type or style. I like a high-sided bowl to mix the batter in, mainly to keep it from slopping everywhere. I usually just use a fork for mixing the ingredients, but a whisk is fine too. I have a silicone ladle and spatula at school, but use cheap black plastic at home, and they work fine. The size of the spatula should be determined by the size of cakes you make. I do lots of small cakes at school, so the blade on my spatula is small. At home, though, I tend to make two larger cakes, so I use a wider one to turn it. The last thing you want is for your pancake to fold in half and fall off because it’s way bigger than the spatula.

The next thing to think about is ingredients. There are no unimportant elements here. And this is where I’ve changed my mind the most. I used to be a snob, thinking it was impossible to make a decent pancake using a baking mix. I made it all from scratch, with flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. But then I discovered Pioneer Baking Mix and I life has never been the same. Yes, the competitor, the one in the yellow box, is okay, but it does not measure up to Pioneer, at least for pancakes. The other ingredients are milk (I prefer whole, but skim will work if you just have to), tw0 eggs, and a splash of vanilla. Be careful not to go overboard on the vanilla, especially if you have some your daughter brings home from her mission trip to Haiti that’s strong enough to fell a tree with its bare hands. I would give you measurements, but I literally never use them. I add as much of the baking mix as I think I need to the bowl, crack in the two eggs, drop in the the vanilla, and pour in as much milk as I think I need to get the consistency I want. I’m pretty conservative on the first pour, as I differ from a lot of folks in that I like my batter as thick as waffle batter. Most cooks go for a much thinner consistency than I do, which makes for a shorter cake and denser consistency than I like.

Okay, the griddle is heated and lubed and the batter is ready. I try to start cooking as soon after I mix as I can. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it doesn’t feel like I get the rise I want if the mix sits too long. That’s why I’ll opt to cook and freeze extras over putting the batter in the fridge for later use. When I scoop the mixture onto the griddle, I’m listening for just the right amount of sizzle. No sound and my griddle isn’t up to temperature. If it sounds like I poured water on a big fire, it’s probably overheated. Too low isn’t ideal, but you can work with it. Too hot and you’ll have blackened, liquid-filled briquets, so try to avoid that. If you run into that and can get it picked up without drizzling it all over, try to move it away from the center of the fire. The edges will be a little cooler.

The question that comes up next is how to know when to turn. Traditional wisdom says to wait until the edges are dry, but that doesn’t work when you start with batter as thick as mine. I wait until I see a good grid of bubbles across the whole pancake. I also lift a corner and look for just enough brown. Not blonde, not burnt umber, but somewhere right in the middle. It’s too late by the time it happens, but I know I haven’t waited long enough if I slop extra batter off the top as I flip it.

I’m pretty traditional when it comes to the pancakes themselves, but the women in my house prefer blueberry pancakes to plain. If I’m going to add anything, I prefer banana. But regardless of add-in, I don’t mix them into the batter. I portion out the cakes onto the griddle and then immediately add the fruit. I do this mainly because I like to have an even distribution without huge blank spots punctuated by blobs of fruit. It also allows me nestle the fruit a little more evenly into the pancake itself, which make for a neater look and more even heating.

Finally, we must address toppings. I grew up with a mother who extolled the virtues of dark Karo syrup. And I didn’t see real butter that I can recall for most of my formative years. We used, as we called it then, oleo. My tastes have since changed. Drastically. When I use syrup, it’s only pure maple syrup. As for butter, my preference is for Irish. But I rarely put butter or syrup on my pancakes. Instead, I put peanut butter and some sort of fruit spread. People who poo poo this forget they’re basically eating a slightly sweeter than normal flat bread. Even if you argue it’s cake, who hasn’t had cake with peanut butter frosting? For me, the perfect way to enjoy a stack of flapjacks is to spread a nice thin layer of peanut butter topped with jelly or jam or fruit spread, preferably strawberry. Grape is fine too. Nearly equal to that is to have a carefully built stack consisting of three buttered pancakes with an over-easy egg betwen each cake. Sarah and Lauren know this as simply cake and eggs. I never had a name for it, so I adopted theirs. The glorious taste sensation of mixing the sweet of the pancakes and syrup with the salty savoriness of the eggs is one of my favorite food experiences.

So that’s my take on pancakes. I’d love to hear from you about how you make yours and what you like on them. I look forward to your comments. And I promise I’ll reply!