If you bake and cook a lot, you know that some foods can be messed up.  You can under-beat meringue, deflate a soufflé, or burn just about anything.  It may be hard to believe that you can ruin pancakes, too.

There are the obvious ways to ruin a pancake such as burning it, forgetting an important ingredient, or dropping it on the floor, but it’s what you do in the middle that can really affect the outcome. 

You can overbeat pancake batter 

When you overbeat pancake batter, the pancakes become tough.  You have to add baking powder and flour to the pancakes and if you overbeat them, you produce more gluten that makes them tough.

Be gentle when you stir your pancake batter.  Make sure that you mix the wet ingredients and the dry ingredients very well separately before combining.  This help to avoid the lumps.

Don’t be over-cautious.  If you just pour in the wet ingredients and stir once, it won’t work.  Use a wooden spoon and fold the ingredients together.  You don’t have to be as gentle as you would with whipped egg whites.

Stir it enough so that it looks like batter, but not enough to add air or so that the batter is thick and pasty.  After you cook them, you will know if you overbeat or underbeat.  If they look like eggs and crusty flour, you needed to mix more.  If you find yourself chewing rubbery pancakes, you probably overbeat them.

Pancakes aren’t as gentle or hard to make as a soufflé, but it is worth it to do it right and get good delicious pancakes out of it!

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