In a dream world, Mom gets up before the crack of dawn every morning and whips up an entire breakfast of eggs, pancakes, scrapple and bacon. She brews up an entire pot of fresh coffee and pours a few glasses of OJ. The family comes down the steps all ready to begin their day.

Wham! Yup, that’s the baby screaming and there’s a small foot jammed under your rib. Welcome to reality.

Though not every day allows us to live in a dream land, we try our best to turn off the television each night and sit down to a dinner that focuses on us, our family, and just being together. Even if it’s just a brief moment before running children out to an evening lesson, class or practice. Breakfast almost never gets that attention, unless we’re having it for dinner. On the occasional weekend, however, I’ll find myself home, with my family and nothing on the schedule.

TIME FOR DAD TO MAKE PANCAKES!!!!

I get a smile out of everyone as soon as I start breaking out the ingredients, except Landon who realizes food is being made and wants it NOW. I whip up a quick batch of batter and in no time we are gathered around the table enjoying breakfast together. Sometimes I’ll add bacon or scrapple or eggs or even a pan of homemade Potatoes O’Brien, but all we really need are pancakes and each other.

I’ve been playing around with different recipes, adding stuff and removing stuff and I think my favorite thus far is as follows:

INGREDIENTS
2 Cups All Purpose Flour
1/4 Cup Sugar
2 TBSP Baking Powder
2 TBSP Vegetable Oil
1 Egg
2 Cups WHOLE MILK
A pinch of Salt

PREPARATION

Mix everything in a bowl and whisk it together. You’re ready to cook!

I prefer to cook breakfast on a griddle. You can cook them in a frying pan, but it will take much longer and who really has extra time? I use an electric griddle to cook pancakes.

Set the temp to a little below medium and let it warm up while you’re mixing up the batter.

Scoop out the batter with a measuring cup or a cookie dough scoop. The scoop will allow you to rapidly drop batter on the griddle without waiting for it to all drip out, and makes a good size pancake. I’ve found the silver dollar size aren’t quite fluffy, and the 1/4 cup of batter makes them so big they end up kinda mushy inside. Also, I can fit 9 of them on the griddle at a time and whip them out pretty quick.

Most pancake recipes tell you to wait for bubbles or give you a certain amount of time. Guess what, it’s always different. I just dump the batter on the griddle, wait a moment and flip the first one I dumped. If it’s golden brown and yummy looking, flip the rest.  If it’s dark and burnt looking, go faster because THEY’RE BURNING. If you just pushed a liquified mess across the griddle, quickly rush to the sink and clean off the spatula, because by the time you are done cleaning the spatula, the rest are going to be ready or burning.

You’ll get a feel for it. Worst case, dump it all in the trash and start over. (YOU’RE A DAD, NOT A CHEF, IT’S OK!!)

Throw some butter and syrup on the table (BIG NOTE: I’m pretty frugal, but I buy real syrup. Yes it’s more expensive, but I looked at the ingredients on the bottle of “syrup” and it looks like I could repair the bumper on my car with some of the stuff in it!!).

Grab the family and enjoy!! You’re DAD and the family loves you right now.

That was EASY too! Now go treat yourself to a Morning Brew (the more caffeine, the better!)!