Flippin’ flapjacks

I was asked to make some American-style pancakes as part of a midday luncheon today.  This is basic breakfast cooking in the US: I think it fits between learning how to stir hot water into mix-‘n-eat oatmeal and how to scramble an egg.

Unfortunately, our usual procedure was to get the Krusteaz mix, add egg and milk, and fire up the griddle.  Minus the mix and the griddle, I was really thrown back to Boy Scout days when we made do with what we had (scrambled pancakes was one memorable result).

I poked around on the recipe sites and found a basic pancake batter recipe:

Ingredients (dozen pancakes)

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted

Minus measuring cups, I poured an approximate cup of flour into a bowl, added 2/3 measures of all the dry ingredients, cracked in a medium egg, then beat it with a fork, adding random splashes of milk until it had the right consistency.  A teflon fry pan, butter to grease the pan (bubbling but not brown), and spoon in a dollop of batter.  It flattened nicely and darkened encouragingly around the edges, but bubbles were slow to raise across the center.  I peeked, I flipped: it had more of a french toast look than a pancake nut-brown, but the batter was cooking all the way through.  I stirred in some blueberries and finished the batch.

Since nobody had tried American-style pancakes  before (and I had a bottle of maple syrup on hand), they passed inspection at the table.  But I know that they didn’t have the correct ‘light and fluffy’ texture and didn’t brown like I expected.

So: Has anyone got a good ‘from scratch’ recipe?  I suspect that I might need more baking powder and a different cooking surface; maybe my batter was a touch too thick.  Suggestions (and grandmotherly recipes or tips) welcomed.