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Happy National Pancake Day! I don’t know who decides what day is when, but I’m not going to let that stop me from celebrating. Whether you call them pancakes or flapjacks, which, I learned from The Great British Baking Show, are completely different things to Brits, or hoecakes or johnny cakes, I think we can all agree they’re a delicious part of a healthy meal. Or the whole meal. 

But they don’t come without a measure of controversy. Some people are purists. No crazy additions, like fruit or nuts or any of that froufrou whipped cream. Just butter and syrup. Or, if you don’t want your kid to become a giant ball of stickiness (I’m talking to you, Sarah), nothing at all. For others, though, that’s what makes the pancakes. I have to admit, I used to be a butter and syrup kind of guy. I’m not proud to confess it, but I gained a hankering for dark Karo syrup on my cakes from my mom. That may help explain why I’m currently on Ozempic. I just really didn’t get the appeal of maple syrup. It was barely sweet. Of course, compared to Karo, a spoonful of sugar would seem a little lacking in the sweet department. 

My tastes have, I like to think, evolved over the years. And I’ve gone through seasons. There was a time that I was a card-carrying pancake snob, who was convinced that only a Philistine would use store-bought pancake mix. I didn’t go full Alton Brown, having a tub of my own homemade mix in the pantry, but I would no sooner use a store-bought mix than eat a bug. Maybe I’m getting lazy in my old age, but my standard recipe for pancakes nowadays is the high protein mix from Aldi, an egg, and a generous glug of buttermilk. I am still a snob when it comes to butter and syrup, but even that has changed. As a child, my butter wasn’t butter at all. It was a generous layer of good old fashioned margarine from a big tub. Now my preference is for Irish butter. And now I find anything other than maple syrup just too cloyingly sweet. Oh, and did I mention the blueberries and chopped pecans? To me, there’s just nothing better, unless it’s a couple of over easy eggs in between the layers of cakes. The juxtaposition of the pancake’s sweet and the egg’s savory is a true festival of flavor in my mouth. 

Of course, there are lots of varieties I haven’t mentioned, both sweet and savory. What is your preference? I’d love to hear from you. Maybe even try out your secret recipe. Everyone who replies to this will be entered into a drawing for a signed copy of the paperback of my book, Cast The First Stone. Can’t wait to hear about your favorite pancakes!

Godspeed,

Joe