The Perfect Pancake Recipe For Two

Hi Bold 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 a notch, tell them what you want to do. Well that's right Gemma, so your pancake recipe is amazing but with pancakes often times 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 off by 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 a hunt and gather mission for each versus getting everything together. But then what happens if you don't have a grazing 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 BiggerBolderBaking.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. Well it's also helpful to make notes sometimes I know. Okay so we have some flour, now 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 these lovely four pancakes each. So Gemma that was one question I was going to ask, so it's four each? Yeah four little ones, so you get a stack. You can do two big ones but then you don't get the drama of the stack. That's right. You need that stack. You want the drama. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a little bit of baking soda in here to react with our buttermilk, a little bit of sugar. You don't need a huge amount of sugar because you always put maple syrup and nice things. We'll see what we put on this one. We'll see what we put on them. And 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. 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 them. I know, I hadn't tried them yet. I made it again and they were awesome. So I figured out what the problem was. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. And he loved them. They're not, like those are, they're both raising agents, yes. They're not interchangeable. No. This is why we write on the lids to say what they are. Right. Okay. And this is why we read our recipe from top to bottom. Okay, we'll get into that later. Here's our buttermilk. A little bit of buttermilk in here, buttermilk, because these are buttermilk pancakes and it makes them 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? Yeah. The buttermilk and the vanilla extract. Yeah. That you have recipes for. If you don't have buttermilk, you can make it yourself. It's really easy. It's okie dokie. We have everything we need, wet, dry. Kevin, if you wouldn't mind with the whisk there. You got it. 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. Does that still work here? Yeah, it's like seven times. It does. Yeah, yeah, 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. I was. And that was an amazing recipe, which funny enough, was a pre Bigger Bolder Baking video that we actually made. Yeah, it was. 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, is hopefully it's delicious results, no matter who wins or loses. That's true. But there is a winner. 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. 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, you know, 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 a that's an interesting one. Let me see. Giant Nutella. She's not quite the Nutella person here. It might be a little, little simpler than I was originally thinking, but here's what we're going to do. Gemma toasted some pecans for a cheesecake recipe. I'm just looking for my nuts. I had pecans chopped. I keep them for salads. I've got an idea now. I think I'm going to 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 going to make. What do you think he's going to 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'm really hoping for is like banana pancakes with blueberries on top because that's like my favorite combination, but I have a feeling I'm going to get something very different. I'm sure it's going to taste good, but it's definitely I think going to be out there. I have a small saucepan here and I'm going to turn it on to a medium low heat. So first I'm going to 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 going to 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 the 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 going to 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 pact 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 going to actually grate on a little bit of dark chocolate here because chocolate and bourbon go really well together and I think the nuts will 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 was 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 all the flavors that he loves. He loves things on top and texture and 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 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 going to get my banana and I think that's it. Just kidding. I found some toasted hazelnuts in the cupboard, so I'm going to sprinkle those on top. So we're going to 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, we'll get going. What do you think Gemma's going to make for you? So I think Gemma is going to 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. What do you hope she makes for you? 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 going to 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. That's 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, 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 I'm nervous and actually excited. Me too, I'm both of those things. But Gemma 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 going to be eating it. You'll be the judge. Yeah yeah. I have to say I'm pretty confident with my stack. Ok. So we'll see. Should we reveal? Yeah we're going to do it on three. Ok. Ready? One, two, three. Oh! What? Oh man! So is this a... That's where the pecans were. I was looking for pecans. Is this... I know, I know. Zach mentioned. Yeah. I figured if I had them out, you would know that I had used them because some of them are gone. But you may not know exactly what is going on with mine. Ok. 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 between the pancakes and there's sauces and everything. Do you know what would have really freaked me out though? What? In a good way? No actually it would have been... Ice cream. I knew it. Didn't I tell you? Ice cream on top. I told you. Damn it. Ok. Ice cream on top would have been good. I'm not going to dwell on that. Ok. So the thing is, I'm not going to describe my pancakes yet. Ok. I want you to taste it and then you tell me. Wee dokey. Ok. Forward. Oh now I'm worried that I'm not going to get it right. It's my own recipe. Wait a second now. Ok. So it's a... Ok. I'll get there. You'll see. It's a daisy. Can you taste it? Yep. So I call this Gemma's boozy breakfast pancakes. I was literally... What do you think? I was about to say boozy pancakes. Oh man. These are... This is a banana split for breakfast. Yep. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. This is good. That's pretty amazing. Actually, 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 Zurst. Now. I know you saw that. You sure did go to Zurst. 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. Here we go. Well, Gem, 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, there 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 let us know what you make. Yeah. And maybe if you guys like this video, Kevin can come back again next year. I hope so. Let's do it. Happy Valentine's Day, Gem. Happy Valentine's Day. Enjoy.