Pancakes

My quest to make the ultimate pancake continues. It all started over a year ago when we had pancakes at Amy's house. My children remarked that her pancakes were better than mine. I had to agree. Since then, I've been trying different recipes, and experimenting with taking some of one recipe and some of another. Here's how I made the pancakes today (and I have to say, they were pretty dern good):

1 1/4 cup flour
2 TBS sugar *
1 heaping tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 cup buttermilk
1 egg
3 TBS melted butter

Sift the flour, then add all the other dry ingredients and mix in a large bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry. Mix just enough to get it together. Don't worry about lumps. Cook on a preheated griddle sprayed with cooking spray.

Here are a few tips about pancakes that I have gathered:

1) Use real buttermilk!!!! It makes a huge difference! I've started keeping it in the house, just so I can make stellar pancakes. I generally use it up before it goes bad.

2) Sift your flour well. (I actually don't own a sifter, so I just fluff it up with a fork really well before I measure it.)

3) Real butter seems to make them better.

4) As always, don't over mix. That's a killer for sure.

* I meant to put in 1/4 cup of sugar, but I think I screwed up and only put in 1/8 cup (which is the same as 2 TBS.) These pancakes were really good, so I wish I could remember how much I actually put in! I'm not really sure, but I think it was the lesser amount. Recipes vary on sugar pretty widely. I'm thinking my screw up might have found the perfect mean. I'll have to try it again, to be sure of what I actually did. Either should make a good pancake, but I prefer what I did today (I think it was 1/8 cup.)