Wake up with pancake batter ready

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TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES

The sound of sizzling butter, the telltale tiny bubbles dotting the batter's surface, a warm plate at the ready soon to be filled with a piping hot stack of pancakes. These are the makings of my ideal leisurely weekend breakfast.

In reality, the only thing piled high on my kitchen table most Saturday mornings is slightly burnt toast smeared with last week's bread-crumb-crusted butter. When faced with the choice between waking up early to whip up pancake batter or hitting the snooze button for a coveted extra hour of sleep, I'll begrudgingly settle for cold toast.

Recently, however, a friend told me she made a pancake batter that can sit in the fridge overnight. The flavor also improves after a few days, she boasted, so the pancakes are even better on Sunday morning. Back-to-back mornings of fork-tender pancakes ready before the coffee finishes percolating? It's too good to be true, I quipped, all the while taking mental notes as she rattled off the recipe.

In my mind, the idea of overnight pancake batter had one insurmountable problem. The key to making a tender pancake is mixing the wet and dry ingredients just prior to cooking. Let the batter sit on the counter for too long, and you'll end up with dense, heavy pancakes best suited for an afternoon of fetch with Fifi.

The secret, said my friend, is adding yeast to the batter. It's the same concept as allowing baguette dough to rest overnight in the fridge so it can rise more slowly. By morning, you've got a premade pancake mix with extra lift from the yeast and a pleasant tang. Not to mention that a batter made on Friday night will last throughout the weekend — even until Monday, should you suddenly feel an urgent need to call in sick and taste your way through Grades AA, A and B of maple syrup. (Don't mistake B for the underdog — it's complex with dark caramel notes.)

This whole overnight batter idea necessitated immediate action. I bought pounds of sweet-cream butter and maple syrup by the jug to prepare for what would surely be countless weekends spent in front of the hot griddle perfecting the recipe, but the recipe didn't need a bit of tweaking.

The batter took minutes to prepare (the night prior, no less). The pancakes were delicious, a cross between a fluffy modern day pancake and a more rustic classic griddlecake. I called my friend between syrup-soaked bites to extol the virtues of her recipe (and atone for doubting her prowess behind the griddle).

Now that I didn't need to get up early to make great pancakes, I found myself using the extra time to experiment with classic mix-ins like toasted nuts and fresh berries. Add mix-ins just before cooking, not the previous night, to prevent them from becoming soggy or watering down the batter.

Once I got the hang of it, I began to think of the batter as an anything-goes blank canvas to be splattered with my favorite fruits and nuts — even chocolate candies (it's the weekend, after all) — a la Jackson Pollock.