Easy Basic Pancakes

For the ingredients as well as instructions, please scroll straight down to the bottom.

These pancakes are easy to make and straight to the point. 6-8 pancakes can take you about 20-30 minutes, and that is if you have the right pan and necessary cutlery, I repeat, that is if you have the right pan and necessary cutlery. 20 minutes, my goodness, well I’d like to say that’s exactly how much they took me, I’d like to say that I made them and focused on other things, I’d also like to say that they were easy and straight to the point, but then if I say all that, I’d just be lying to you.

I have never made pancakes before that drained me as much as these ones did. At most, 45 minutes should be the time it takes you to finish everything when making pancakes, but me, lol, you see me, they took me a good 2 hours….and a half. Yes 2 hours and 30 minutes. I wanted to give up on them so many times but the disciplined child in me kept saying no Lele; you have to finish what you have started. Therefore, I had no choice to finish.

So at this point, you are probably wondering what went wrong, why did they take me so long to finish, well, be comfortable while I tell you about THEE most draining meal I have ever had to make, my goodness.

1) Wrong timing

There were many people in my house, including my dad. The reason I say including my dad is because he will not care what you are busy with, if he asks you to do something you do it and not give excuses. So yes, in the middle of me mixing the ingredients, he would ask me to hand him salt for his food (he was eating), I would hand him salt and go back to the kitchen. Literally 30 seconds later, he would ask me to come take the salt and put it back in the cupboard, I mean, why me when my little sister was right in the room next to him I will never understand. Nevertheless, I love him.

2) Lack of cooking stuff

People I love food, and I love to cook okay? Truly, I think I'm a good cook but there is one thing and that is NOT HAVING THE NECESSARY COOKWARE to make my meals. I mean, Lele, is it so hard for you to get a dough mixer. I need to do better if I am serious about this cooking journey, save up if I have to. Anyways because of my lack of necessary cooking stuff, I ended up using a wooden spoon to mix my dough, now that was a workout on its own. The dough came out smooth and all but, it took forever to get there.

3) Lastly, my non-stick pan decided to change to a stick-pan….Yep, like I needed one more thing to go wrong

So I need you to understand that when I bought this pan it was a non-stick, why it decided to be a stick-pan suddenly I will never know, seriously, ok maybe it’s because it’s scratched there and there I’m really not sure. Anyway, let me back up a bit, so after mixing my dough, it was now time for the fun part, making actual pancakes.

So I brushed my pan with margarine, as per instructions (remember at this point, in my mind, my pan is still a non-stick pan) and whisked my first quarter cup in the pan, DISASTER. Within 2 minutes, the pancake was burning and STICKING to the pan, you can imagine my confusion. I had to switch off my stove and throw out the pancake. Remember when all this is happening, there’s people in the house and all they see is smoke from the kitchen and are asking what the problem is. Chaos I tell you! Had to close the kitchen door and let no one in because on top of these pancakes making it seem like I could not cook, my family was a distraction.

So, after closing the kitchen door, I went in for a second pancake all hopeful as you can imagine. I used more margarine on the pan this time around, but same thing as before happened if not worse. I had to throw it out as well, so far, I have thrown out two burnt pancakes and really, that is a waste. My pan was letting me down; I did not have any other alternatives why? Because Lele does not have the necessary cookware rememberrrr.

At this point, I wanted to give up and throw everything out but I could not, I did not want to throw out the dough that took me so long to do using just a spoon! So instead, I had to think of a strategy. This is when I realized that instead of margarine, I could just use oil to avoid the dough sticking to my pan. So I used oil instead and as you can imagine, they came out perfect and everything went back to normal after what seemed like days of making pancakes, phew! The pancakes still came out great and my family enjoyed them, especially my little sister who kept coming back for more. Oil saved the day, I will forever be grateful for that oil.

TIP: Now remember; you are not making fatcakes, you are making pancakes therefore, you only need 1-2 Tablespoons of oil for each pancake if you are going to use a stick pan.

So why did I tell you all this? Simply because I need you to understand that when cooking, not everything will go smoothly as according to instructions. There will be things you seem to get wrong, it might be because of using the wrong pan or just not having enough ingredients, but, do not panic and start thinking that you cannot cook, you can definitely cook; all you just need is to think of different strategies to approach whatever you might be making. Cooking is nothing but creativity.

Please find the ingredients below and thank you so much for reading

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INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup self-raising flour

• 2 Tablespoons white sugar

• ½ teaspoon salt

• 1 egg, beaten

• 1 cup milk

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, an salt. Mix in milk, egg and oil. Mix until smooth

2. Heat a lightly oiled non-stick pan over medium high heat. Scoop batter onto the non-stick pan. Brown on both sides and serve hot

...UNTIL NEXT TIME MY GOOD PEOPLE, BYE FOR NOW!!!