Okay – let’s get this out of the way.  In this third wave of the Cult of Motherhood, Bisquick isn’t allowed.  We are supposed to make our pancakes from scratch, fit them in a Millenium Falcon mold, douse them with pure Vermont maple syrup, side it with a fruit salad (no less than four fruits, one must be tropical) or an asparagus chevre frittata and always served with freshly-squeezed OJ.

Mmmm….that does sound good.  But girl, I ain’t got no time for that.

So, time currently being my absolute most precious thing, I have turned to pancake starter.  Since we are targeting zero waste here, I’m going to make it from scratch, and THEN, not make my pancakes from scratch.  Trackin?

Here we go, Alton Brown-style:

Wet team:  I grabbed some leftover coconut oil from my failed toothpaste and somewhat successful deodorant experiments and some olive oil which is available in bulk in Albuquerque (though I’m still using up my store-bought).  Even though butter isn’t yet available zero waste, I predict it will be in the future (I just suffered from a rare bout of optimism there).  Plus, butter is what I usually use to make pancakes and I wanted to do a taste test.

Dry team:  flour, whole-wheat flour, baking powder, salt and sugar (optional).

Mix it:  You can use your hand, your mixer, your food processor or even your blender.  I have a food processer but it’s buried in the shed somewhere between a cockroach nest and black widow web so I went with the only slightly less scary option:  Toddler with a Fork Perched on the Pass-through.

Then I cleaned up the mess.

And then I used a pastry cutter.

Store it:  in the fridge.  Especially if you are using butter or whole wheat flour.

Make it:  this is where you channel Alton Brown.  Don’t use all the milk right away.  Use most of it, stir it a bit and decide if you need more.  Not too dry, not to wet.

Once you get the right mix, do the Alton thing and “Walk away.  Just, walk away.”

Which means, don’t over stir it.

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So how did they turn out?

First we tried the olive oil mix.

And it was….friggin’ awesome!  So light and fluffy and nummy, I didn’t want to move on to the next batter.

But I’m glad I did because the coconut oil batter was also delicious.  You could taste the coconut a bit and I didn’t have a problem with that at all.

And the butter pancakes?  Meh – they were fine.  Nothing special.  Not as good as the first two.

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1.  To make the mix:

• 2 cups flour (1 cup white, 1 cup wheat)
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• > 1 Tbsp sugar

• 1 cup mix
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 egg