Strawberry Pancakes

I never liked pancakes growing up (the syrup made them too soggy, I preferred waffles) but I like them now mostly because they're easy to whip up on a Sunday morning, especially if you have one of the following dairy items on hand: buttermilk (most preferable), regular milk (also preferable) or, as I learned today, sour cream and half and half (not preferable, but certainly good).

Yes, to make pancakes you just mix a bunch of dry ingredients together (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt) and then a bunch of wet ingredients (milk or buttermilk or sour cream, eggs, melted butter), and then you add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, heat some butter in a nonstick skillet and fry up the pancakes a few at a time. Only, as I discovered today, you can also add a mystery ingredient. Sometimes the mystery ingredient is chocolate chips, other times the mystery ingredient is coconut. Today the mystery ingredient was strawberries!

Funny how when you have an impulse to do something, like add strawberries to pancakes, you look for validation that your idea is ok online (at least I do). I Googled "strawberry pancakes" and saw several recipes and I knew it was ok. And sure enough, after making them and eating them, it was more than ok: it's a terrific way to use up seasonal strawberries that you bring home from the farmer's market and don't know how to use.

I figure at this point in the post you're probably wondering: "are you going to give us a recipe?" And normally, I'd say: "No, just do any pancake recipe you like and add sliced up strawberries at the end" but instead I AM going to give you a recipe in the style of Star Wars opening credits. Enjoy!

Note: the Star Wars opening credit sequence no longer works, so here's the recipe I used from Stella Bites. All you do is fold in sliced up strawberries at the end--use your eye to gauge how much to add!

1 cup flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs (I used 1 egg and the following egg substitute: 2 Tbs. water |1 Tbs. oil | ½ tsp. baking powder)

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup water

1/2 tsp. vanilla

2 tablespoons butter, melted

Sliced strawberries (about 1 cup)

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in large bowl. Combine eggs, sour cream, water, and vanilla in medium bowl. Whisk in melted butter. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Stir until moistened. Fold in sliced strawberries.

Preheat griddle skillet over medium heat; grease lightly. Pour about 1/4 cup butter onto hot griddle for each pancake. Cook until tops of pancakes are bubbly; turn and cook until browned.