How to throw a pancake social at home
What started as a way to feed the kids’ sleepovers has become a PJ party for friends and family
One of the annual class projects at the Midwestern boarding school where I grew up was making maple syrup. After collecting sap from the local stand of sugar maples, we’d stay up all night, boiling the stuff into syrup in a wood-burning contraption we’d set up near the decrepit tennis courts. Then we’d celebrate the season’s haul with a pancake social. It was a party we looked forward to all year — an excuse to pull an allnighter outside when normally we’d be under curfew in the dorms, followed by the reward of towers of pancakes as night turned into morning.
Now that I’m not a teenager but a parent to one, my pancake socials are more modest: They started as breakfasts I made when the kids were little and had sleepover guests to feed; now they’re an excuse for the family and the occasional friend or two to get together on the weekend without the imperative that anyone change out of their pyjamas.
My weekend plan for pancakes usually involves hitting the market on Saturday — to load up on fruit, jam, honey, flowers, maybe a wreath for the door — and stay home on Sunday — to read the paper, watch the early NFL game and engineer the first wave of caffeine while I wait for folks to arrive.
The guests might be my daughter and her friends, taking a break from homework or college applications; or my friends, gathering for a few hours of cooking and conversation. Because one of the myriad joys of pancakes is that they can be eaten for any meal of the day — or sometimes all of them, as my older daughter, now with a college kitchen of her own, points out.
How to pancake
Batter up. I cook pancakes in a cast iron pan that likely predates my mother’s griddling, with quite a lot of butter over medium-high heat. The trick is to calibrate the heat, butter and batter so that the interior cooks through while the edges pan-fry into a crispy, bronze filigree. Ladle the batter into shapes — snowmen are the easiest — or co-ordinate the diameters to stack or pyramid. I’ve made pancakes as big as omelettes and used cookie cutters; squirt bottles also work, though not with blueberries. The first pancake or two might be imperfect (I eat those) then I pile up the rest on a plate kept warm in a very low oven. Fruitify the menu The easiest thing is just to dump your market berries into the batter, or dot them into pancakes to order if you’ve got a picky crowd. But for me, hearkening back to those Ohio pancake piles, apples are always part of the mix: There was an apple orchard at the boarding school too, so we added cut apples to the batter. I like to sauté them now — same pan, more butter — and put them on top of the stacks rather than in them. You don’t need a recipe: Core and thinly slice as many as will comfortably fit into the pan, leaving the pretty skins on. (Choose a tart, firm apple variety, which holds up better in the pan, such as Pink Lady or Arkansas Black.) Add a big nub of butter and a pinch of salt, and cook the apples on medium-high heat until they’re cara- melized, flipping as you go. What to put on your pancakes I make brown sugar syrup because my mother did: Not having the budget for real maple syrup, she boiled down brown sugar and water. For the Canadians among us: Rogers Golden Syrup, a thick sugar syrup the colour of French copper pots. Butter makes things better. Look for Beurre de Baratte or Le Beurre Bordier, or serve up butter you make yourself by shaking a Mason jar of good cream until it is transformed. Pair jams that match or complement your grains and fresh fruit, depending on what’s in season and available. Whole grain gains Although you can use white flour or even a mix if you really need to (see: camping, survivalism), these days, I make only whole grain pancakes. The bran cuts through the gluten, it seems. This geeky stuff is relevant, because many pancake recipes caution against overmixing. So not only does using whole grain flour give your pancakes more flavour, make them a bit more nutritious and gives you a good reason to source local or well-regarded flours, but it also means you can take a break from flipping, make yourself another cortado and then whisk the bowl without worry.