the most bestest pancakes (and oven bacon)

Noah was at his parents’ place Sunday night for a Super Bowl party, so it was just me and the kids at home, which meant that, during dinner, we had a picnic in the living room and watched a movie.

I posted this recipe on my old blog just over two years ago, and I keep going back to it over and over again. Except it’s annoying to have to log into my old blog to pull it up every time, so I figured I’d post it here to make my life easier. And yours, if you’re into pancakes. A few of the details of this post have changed, so I edited it to reflect those changes.

*****

This is my mother-in-law’s pancake recipe and I have never tasted one better. When my Opa visited us in Regina almost two four years ago, I made these for him one morning and he liked them — this from the guy who owned his owned his own cafe for most of his life and therefore knows his food and wouldn’t compliment it unless he meant it.

Today was a blizzardy cold day and pancakes seemed like the perfect easy dinner. I found some blueberries in the freezer and added them as well. Pancakes seems to be one of the only foods that Liliana will ALWAYS eat, and always eat a lot of. This recipe makes a huge batch. I always halve it and it feeds the four five of us perfectly.

Ingredients:
5 eggs (3 if halving recipe)
3 cups milk
4 cups flour
1-1/4 cup sugar
6 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1-1/2 tsp salt
a pinch of nutmeg
2/3 cup oil
1/3 tsp vanilla

Throw all the ingredients in a bowl, mix it up, and add blueberries or chocolate chips if you’d like. The halved recipe makes about 8 big pancakes, or about 20 little pancakes.

*****

Liliana had been begging for bacon for the previous week or two, so I finally picked some up on Friday. She is an extremely picky eater and it is very hard to get protein and fruit/veggies into her. So, if she’s asking for something in those categories, odds are I’m going to give it to her.

A while back, I asked Google if I could make bacon in my oven, because I have only one frying pan and it sucks and it is not big enough to make bacon and eggs and it’s no fun to eat either one cold, which means they must be made at the same time. The same goes for pancakes and bacon. Apparently making bacon in the oven is a thing, one I knew nothing about. But here’s the thing: oven bacon is exactly 142 times better than pan-fried bacon. AND it stays flat, which, you know, doesn’t matter at all, I guess.

I laid the bacon out in a single layer on a foil-lined baking sheet and baked it for about 15 minutes at 350°F. The foil prevents my husband from cursing my name when he does the dishes, and makes it easy to scoop up the bacon when it’s ready.

We like our bacon crispy, and this method makes the most perfect crispy bacon imaginable. It disappeared quickly.

Another thing I sometimes do is top the bacon with syrup before baking it, which I forgot to do this time.

Now if only I could find a meal for every night of the week that all three of the kids would gobble up (without a single complaint) as well as they do this one.