If you have Instagram, or you peruse Buzzfeed, or you’ve got some sense of what’s viral in today’s world, you’ve probably encountered the phenomenon of fluffy pancakes. These cute, spongy little breakfast foods came to us from Japan, and some say they were inspired by chubby anime characters. In the past five years these pancakes have made their way from Osaka to restaurants all around the world, thanks to the magic of the internet, and since we’re all for delicious trends we were inspired to try to make them for ourselves. After a previous attempt came out disastrous and flat, we turned to this recipe from the New York Times and tried it out for ourselves. These little treats were kind of tricky to pull off, and it does take some amount of time for a yield of about 6 pancakes, but they were adorable and delicious and we were happy with this second try. So here we’ll show you how we made our own fluffy pancakes.
You’ll need:
- 4 eggs
- Sugar
- Vanilla extract
- Baking powder
- Flour
- Milk
- A lemon
- Syrup
- Powdered sugar
- Blueberries
- Whipped cream
* You’ll also need 2 metal pastry rings that are about 3 inches wide and at least 2 inches tall, as well as 2 large spatulas.
Start by separating out all your egg whites from your yolks, then putting the whites in the bowl of a stand mixer and setting it in your fridge. Then take 2 egg yolks (you can discard the rest) and whisk with a tablespoon of sugar, 2 teaspoons of vanilla and a teaspoon of baking powder. Add in 6 tablespoons of flour and 1/4 cup of cold milk and whisk to combine.
Now take your egg whites out of the fridge and add in a small squeeze of juice from your lemon and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Set the bowl on your stand mixer and use a whisk attachment to whip for about a minute until the eggs begin to foam. With the mixer running add in 5 tablespoons of sugar, one tablespoon at a time, then turn it up to high and beat for only a minute until you have a stiff, fluffy, bright white meringue.
Use a rubber spatula to scoop up about a third of the egg whites and stir them into the yolk mixture. Then add another 1/3 of the egg whites in, then the remainder, and mix gently until you have a smooth batter.
Now take your two pastry rings and grease their insides. Place a skillet with high sides over low heat and put the rings inside of it. Use a ladle to scoop about 1/2 cup of batter into each ring, then put a lid over the skillet and cook the pancakes for 4-5 minutes until you can see the batter start to bubble.
To flip the pancakes over, wedge one spatula underneath one of the rings and put the other on top. Carefully but quickly flip the ring over and place it back in the skillet, then do the same for the other ring – this part is pretty tricky, so it might help to practice your flipping technique first with the empty rings before you start cooking the pancakes.
Put the lid back on and cook the pancakes for another 2-3 minutes, then gently push them out of the rings onto a plate and repeat this process for the rest of your batter.
Once you’re ready to eat your pancakes, pour some syrup over them, dust with powdered sugar, and serve with blueberries and whipped cream.
So you can see that these take some skill and patience – mixing up the batter is simple enough, but flipping the pancakes inside their rings can be challenging, and it also takes some time to cook up all your pancakes since you can only make two at a time. Still, while we probably wouldn’t try making these for every breakfast, they were fun to try out and eat on a Sunday morning. It was nice to be able to make something so cute and popular, and we felt some amount of accomplishment once we got this recipe right. So if you’re feeling experimental and can master the flipping technique and be zen about having to work and wait for your food, these are a treat you should try out at least once.