Card Captor Sakura, the manga of my youth. I used to spend all my allowance money on the manga from this series. In fact, it’s the only collection of manga I own that is complete. Clocking in at twelve volumes total, it’s not as big as some manga series, but as a kid, it was my absolute favorite. I loved it! Sakura always looked so cute, and was so cool as she recaptured the Clow cards. CLAMP is amazing in general and Sakura + Syaoran? My original OTP, let’s be real.
Funnily enough, pancakes, one of Sakura’s favorite food, are well loved in Japan in general. There are whole restaurants dedicated to the food (not unlike America, if we’re being honest…), and it’s seen as more of a snack food than a breakfast food. I was always amazed when I was little that Sakura could just make pancakes at home to snack on, because here in America it’s not really common to eat them besides at breakfast.
But, my life has been difficult lately, so I needed some breakfast for dinner, which is exactly what I made this pancakes for. They were delicious, easy to throw together on a weeknight, and very….not perfectly browned. It turns out I’m not a great pancake maker. I either burn them, or cook them at such a low temperature that they don’t really brown up at all. I couldn’t find a happy medium! So mine don’t look as amazing as they do in CCS, but man, I tried. At the very least, you can follow the recipe and give it a shot yourself- hopefully if you can make them nice and brown looking, you can share your secret with me so I can improve my pancake game. Let’s get to the recipe!
The Ingredients
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tbs sugar (optional)
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 cups milk
2 tbs butter, melted
Pat of butter for top
Maple syrup
Original pancake recipe found here.
Make ze Pancakes
This recipe is a cinch! Plop your flour, ,sugar (if using), salt, and baking powder in a bowl and set aside.
Measure out your milk, toss in your eggs and melted butter, and whisk thoroughly together.
Pour the liquids into the dry ingredients, and whisk until everything is combined and few lumps remain. Don’t over mix!
Now comes the tough part- for me. I’m not sure if I have bad pans, or if my gas stove isn’t good at regulating heat. Whatever the case may be, I found that using a nonstick cooking spray, instead of butter to grease the pan, created a more even brown coating. Check out the pictures below. These were both made using non-stick cooking spray. (Don’t the patterns look cool?) The pancakes I used butter for just got burned rings around the outer edges while leaving the insides a boring color.
Anyway, heat your pan over medium-low heat. Grease with cooking spray (or butter, if you want.) Once the pan is heated, pour in about 1/2 cup of batter. I measured it out so I could get similar sized pancakes every time, but you could also eyeball it.
The pancakes are ready to flip when little air bubbles burst on the top of your batter. This pancake below is allllmost ready.
All that’s left to do is keep cooking and stacking them up- when stacked, the pancakes retain heat surprisingly well. Stack them up and place your pat of butter on top! Douse artistically with syrup.
All done! I couldn’t get mine to look perfectly pretty, but they still tasted good. 😀 Pancakes also keep well in the freezer and reheat nicely if you make extra and want to eat them throughout the week. Hopefully, like Sakura-chan, these can become a delicious treat for you after a hard day at work or school. 🙂
Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed 🙂 Leave comments if you can tell me how to achieve a nice tan pancake all the way through. If I find a way to do it, I’ll post an update sharing the secret. It can’t be that hard…right?
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