Granddad’s Penultimate Cakes

This pancake recipe is a hand-me-down from an old chemist, Alex’s Grandfather. If you take the time to hunt down the required wheat germ and some proper flour, you will resolutely swear off pancakes from a box until the day you die. Grandaddy Brown did. Never again will you contemplate a $6 stack of fluff that will languish in your gut for the rest of a lackadaisical Sunday. Not that these thick flapjacks won’t send you flying into a food coma–they will–but it will be a rocking-chair-on-the-stoop coma you can relish with old tyme vigor.
Make these treats for your sweetheart in bed, your friends after a night of drinking, or for your kids when they get off drugs. The only thing you’ll think about after you eat them will be when you get to convert another in the war against Bisquick Mediocrity®.
Penultimate Pancakes
1 envelope dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1⁄2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cup buttermilk, or soy milk.
1/3 cup honey
1 Tbs. molasses
1 1/2 cup flour buckwheat flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
3 Tbs. warm water
6 Tbs. vegetable oil
2 eggs
For the Batter:
Gently mix the yeast, sugar, and warm water in a small bowl and cover for fifteen minutes. Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. In a third bowl–a larger one–whisk together the eggs, veggie oil, buttermilk, honey and molasses. Check your yeast: if it’s all foamy, gently mix it into the batter. Gradually mix in the dry ingredients and you’re done.
To Prepare and Plate:
Heat a lightly greased nonstick pan on a medium flame. Feel out for yourself how big you want your cakes to be, we like ours to be about 2 inches in diameter. The batter will start to bubble and when the bubbles just start to set flip your cakes. Serve your pancakes hot with maple syrup, fresh berries, and a few leaves of minced mint.
Beverage: Mimosas
Soundtrack: Palace Music’s Viva Last Blues