A simple pancake recipe for two: Fluffy and delicious every time

Hi, both bakers, it is almost Valentine's Day. So as always, I invite my husband Kevin, the one time a year to come into the kitchen and bake with me the one time. Well, hopefully more than that. But the thing I'm excited about this year, Gemma is this is our first time baking in our new kitchen. Yep. So we've got the extra room, you know, we've got room to work. And what I thought we would do is I have a recipe for pancakes for two, which I thought would be perfect for Valentine's Day. But Kevin wanted to kind of kick that up and not to tell them what you want to do. Well, that's right, Jen. So your pancake recipe is amazing. But with pancakes, oftentimes it's about what you add to it, what you put on top. Yeah, that's true. And so I figured we would test our knowledge of each other and make what we think the other person's favorite flavor combination would be. So what we're going to do is customize them for each other. That's right. I mean, we've been married for almost 10 years. I think we know a lot about each other. So here's the challenge. Do we really know what our favorite pancakes would be for the other. Yeah, I think so. I'm down with that. Okay, so we're going to start up and making the batter together. And I'll go get the ingredients. Great, let's do it. So funny enough, one thing that we just talked about recently is that we have different styles, the way that we read and actually do a recipe. Is that right? Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So even the whole gathering of the ingredients, I don't usually do that. I actually I follow each instruction one by one. But I tend to go off on like a hunt and gather mission for each versus getting everything together. But then what happens if you don't have like raising agent or sugar or something? Well, I sometimes run into that. Okay, Kevin, what I'm going to do is I'll measure out the ingredients and you can mix up the batter. Okay, sounds great. And remember, the recipe is on bigger boulder baking.com. You can find it right there. And you can print it off from there. That's right. I'm kind of old school. So I really like to print off recipes. Yeah. Well, it's also it's helpful to make notes sometimes I know. Okay, so we have some flour. This is just a batch enough for two people. So we only have one cup of flour. It's like the perfect amount you get like these lovely like four pancakes each. Oh, that's so Gem, that was one question I was gonna ask is so it's for each? Yeah, for little ones. So you can stack you could do two big ones, but then you don't get like the drama of the stack. That's right. You Yeah, you want the drama? Yeah, yeah. bit of baking soda in here to react with our buttermilk. Little bit of sugar. You don't need a huge amount of sugar because you always put like maple syrup and like nice things. We'll see what we will see what you put on them. Yeah. Then a little bit of salt. Kevin, could you give that a mixy mix together? You got it. You got it. So I made one mistake with another of your pancake recipes, the no flour pancake. I actually put baking powder instead of baking soda in that recipe. Yeah. And I didn't try them. But George did and the look on his face. You made the baby try them and you didn't try I know I haven't tried them yet. I made it again. And they were awesome. So I figured out what the problem was. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. He loves they're not in like those are they're they're both raising agents. Yes. They're not interchangeable. No, no. This is why we write on the lids. Yes. To say what they are. Right. Okay. And this is why we read our recipe from top to okay, we'll get into that later. our buttermilk and a little bit of buttermilk in here buttermilk because these are buttermilk pancakes and makes them like really soft and delicious. And then we're going to add in a little bit of vanilla extract for flavor. Always need that. Yep. Crack in an egg. Could you mind putting that in the bin please? You got it. Thank you. And a little bit of melted butter and if you wouldn't mind whisking this together. You got it. So you may have been able to notice that actually two of those ingredients were homemade, right? The buttermilk and the vanilla extract. Yeah, do you have recipes for if you don't have buttermilk, you can make it yourself. It's really easy. Okie dokie, we have everything we need, wet, dry. Kevin, if you wouldn't mind with the whisk there, just whisking this together until it just comes to a batter. Some lumps are okay. Well, can I give your special pancake tip? You can. So in one of your original recipes, you had mentioned, you're supposed to stir enough times to spell out pancake. That's still yeah, it's like seven times it does Yeah, you really want to under like don't overmix a pancake batter leave the lumps in there. Because when you get those really thick, fluffy pancakes, it's when the batter was literally like just combined. So while you're mixing that I'm going to tell a little story when I had my catering business in San Francisco 10 plus years ago when we just started dating 11 years ago. I used to make a lot of pancakes for my business and one time Kevin was over and I was testing a recipe for cinnamon roll pancakes so this is before they became a huge thing online. And I have pictures of maybe we'll show them of Kevin and I making the pancakes but it was definitely a younger looking Gemma and Kevin but it was a long time ago but yeah we've been making pancakes for a very long time. And that was an amazing recipe which funny enough was a pre Bigger Bolder Baking video that we actually made. Yeah it was you're right. Some of you have discovered it. Yeah don't go looking for it. So I think that's it our pancakes that looks good Kevin there's a few lumps in there you can stop mixing now. Now we should get stuck into the recipe so what is this is this like a challenge is it a bake off? It's a challenge. I love a good bake off. It's a challenge but the good news is hopefully it's delicious results no matter who wins or loses. That's true. dinner. Yeah, as long as we know, you know what our favorite things would be. Yeah, I think I have some ideas. And there's a few things like stuck away in our cupboards that I think I can pull out for this special occasion. See, I can't even think what's in there right now. So I'm excited to explore it. Well, you better go in and have a look. You give me a head start. And you cook off your pancakes first, I'm going to peace out and then I'll come back in and make mine. Let's do it. So I really haven't thought about this in advance as far as I'm going to explore. I want to figure out kind of the right sort of combination, come up with an idea, wait to be inspired here. Whoa. Gemma loves Oreos. Gemma does love Oreo. That's an interesting one. Let me see. Giant Nutella. She's not quite the Nutella person here. It might be a little simpler than I was originally thinking, but here's what we're gonna do. Gemma toasted some pecans for a cheesecake recipe. I'm just looking for my notes. I had pecans chopped. I keep them for salads. I've got an idea now. I think I'm gonna get the right combination of things that she would love and not even think about for breakfast. And I even have a name for it, boozy breakfast. Okay, so I just need one very important thing in here, syrup, and not just any syrup, Vermont Pure Maple Syrup. Now, let's go to the other room and let's get one more thing. So in order to make these boozy breakfast pancakes, Of course I need some booze. So I have some bourbon here. Bourbon isn't her favorite drink, but she does have a maple pecan butter sauce that has a bit of bourbon added to it as well. So I think that's what I'm gonna make. What do you think he's gonna make for you? I think Kevin is going to really kind of push the envelope here and get like really creative because it's a challenge and he's going to try and like really wow me. What I was hoping for is like banana pancakes with blueberries on top because that's like my favorite combination, but I have a feeling I'm gonna get something very different. I'm sure it's gonna taste good, but it's definitely, I think, gonna be out there. I have a small sauce pan here, and I'm gonna turn it on to a medium-low heat. So first I'm gonna add the syrup, and now the bourbon. And then just heat it up for a couple minutes here. You're just looking to heat up the sauce so you don't want it to boil. All right, now we're gonna cook off the pancakes. So another good tip from Gemma is just use a quarter cup measure here to spoon out each of the pancakes. It should give you eight pancakes from this batter. So we're going to spoon out four of them. You really want to try to make these round. So just space them out, give them a room. They need to breathe and just keep spooning them out and they should end up about the same size. So the best thing is, is if I made these too small, the ones Gemma makes for me will be extra big. Okay, so we're just gonna let these cook for a couple minutes here. We're looking for the telltale sign of bubbles on top of the pancakes, which tells you that they're ready to be flipped. How do you think you're doing? You think this is what Gemma wants? I really do. I kept it simple, but added that pack of boozy flavor that I think she'll love. So after thinking about it, I should add some pecans to the syrup too, so they get heated up as well. I think Gemma will love that. Now just add in some butter and let that heat through. So I let these cook just for a few more minutes and I think they are perfect. Look at those big, fluffy pancakes. All right, so I wanted to make Gemma's boozy breakfast pancakes really simple, but I may have made them too simple. So I'm gonna actually grate on a little bit of dark chocolate here because chocolate and bourbon go really well together and I think the nuts add an extra kick as well. So I'm just going to grate a little bit of chocolate on top first, then add on our sauce, and then of course we need a big old scoop of whipped cream here, and then a little bit more grated chocolate on top. I really think these capture what Gemma would like in her pancakes, so I hope she likes them. But most of all, I'm excited to see what she makes me. So I'm racking my brain trying to think of what to make for Kevin, and then I thought of something. Something that's a little bit extra, but still has like all the flavors that he loves like he loves he loves like things on top and texture and like you know color and everything so what i'm going to make for him is actually banana split pancakes so i'm going to grab some cherries some sprinkles on top of these pancakes i know it sounds kind of crazy but bear with me then i need some sauces from the fridge luckily i always have sauce in my fridge for ice cream emergencies chocolate sauce right here and then in this random bowl a little bit of strawberry syrup because you have to have like chocolate and strawberry syrup on a banana split. So that's what we're having also. And I think I might grab a carton of cream. I'm just gonna get my banana and I think that's it. Just kidding I found some toasted hazelnuts in the cupboard so I'm gonna sprinkle those on top. So we're gonna cook off our pancake batter and I'm just realizing that he left me hardly any batter. I have enough for like two maybe three small pancakes but anyway um we'll get going. What do you think Gemma's gonna make for you? So I think Gemma is gonna go the healthier route. So right beside here I'm going to add on a little bit of butter. I think she'll probably add fruit maybe she'll add nuts something like that on top because she knows that I like to have a good healthy breakfast. A little bit of sugar and then I'm going to add thick slices of banana and I'm just going to fry these off until they're golden brown. I hope she takes Nutella and slathers it all over bananas and also pour syrup or something like that on top because you know if you're gonna go big go big. I can tell by the top of these pancakes that it's time to flip them over. Look how gorgeous and golden brown they are and they're getting lovely and thick. This is why I love this batter so much. I was a little bit sad that I only had three pancakes but the thing about it is If Kevin used the majority of the batter, that means I'm getting more pancakes. So it's kind of a win-win situation. These bananas are looking great, I might start flipping them over. How confident are you right now that he'll like this? I'm confident because he likes a lot of different flavor profiles, not just banana split that he absolutely adores, but what he loves is different textures. So the roasted bananas that are fried on the grill, I'm going to put some whipped cream on top, the different sauces like the rich and then the kind of fruity and then like texture of like chopped nuts on top like I have a feeling that's what's going to like appeal to him is just like the different dimensions of like flavors and textures. So I'm pretty confident. So my bananas are lovely and caramelized but what I'm going to do is layer them in between the pancakes so you get that really nice texture. So now this is all about presentation I'm going to top these pancakes with some whipped cream, chocolate sauce, strawberry sauce, sprinkles, a few chopped nuts, and of course a cherry on top. There's no way he's not going to like this, at least I hope not. So here we are, the moment of truth, I have to say there was no peeking whatsoever. I have no idea what is under this bowl. I know, I know, I'm nervous and actually excited. Me too, I'm both of those things. But Gemma, actually I have to say I think I did better than I thought I would. Oh really? I did. That's great. I'm glad, considering I'm gonna be eating it. You'll be the judge. Yeah, yeah. I'm good. I have to say I'm pretty confident with my stack. Okay. So we'll see. Should we reveal? Yeah, we're gonna do it on three. Okay. Ready? One, two, three. So is this a... That's where the pecans were. I was looking for pecans. Is this... I know, I know. Zach mentioned Zach mentioned, yeah, I figured if I had them out, you would know that I had used them. No, I didn't see them. Some of them are gone. But you may not know exactly what, what what is going on with mine. Let me try to guess. So with mine, yeah, it's a banana split. Yes. It's a banana split. Yeah, I love it. There's caramelized bananas in the middle of between the pancakes. And there's sauces and everything. Do you know what would really freak me out, though, in a good way? No, actually, would have been ice cream ice cream ice cream i knew it i knew it didn't i tell you i told you damn it okay okay ice cream on top i'm not gonna i'm not gonna okay so the thing is is i'm not gonna describe my pancakes yet i want you to taste it and then you tell me we do key okay oh no i'm worried i'm not gonna get it right my own my own recipe wait a second now okay so it's okay i'll get there you'll you'll see you'll see can you taste it yep so i call this jemma's boozy breakfast pancakes. I was about to say breakfast pancakes. Oh man, these are, this is a banana split for breakfast. Yeah. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. That's pretty, that's pretty amazing. Actually, I, Gemma, I think that's a new, a totally new breakfast pancake because you can make banana pancakes and add those on top. The funny thing is though, Gem, is I thought you were going to make me something super healthy. I figured you were going to go like healthy, healthy breakfast. I went to dessert. Now you sure you sure did go dessert. Yeah, I want to see you recreate these as well. I think that would be pretty fun. Maybe come up with your own. Yeah, the pancake for two challenge. Mm hmm. Here we go. Well, Jim, this was a whole lot of fun. I always love baking with you. Oh, I just got some hazelnuts. That's so good. Yeah, well, they would have been pecans if you hadn't taken them. I know. Make sure to get the recipe on biggerbolderbaking.com. We'll include some of these ideas here and um let us know what you make yeah and maybe if uh you guys like this video kevin can come back again next year i hope so i hope so let's do it happy valentine's day enjoy