Pancakes and Syrup from Your Food Storage

For years I made pancakes using a recipe that called for eggs, milk, and oil.  The pancakes were good, but they were kind of a hassle to make.  Also, eggs and milk kept me from making pancakes when going light-weight camping because it would entail taking powdered eggs (yech) and powdered milk and reconstituting them before cooking.   About 20 years ago I went camping with a friend of mine who taught me how to make pancakes the quick and easy way, and I’ve been doing it ever since.  The nice thing about this recipe is that you can make these pancakes using nothing but items from your food storage.  I have also thrown in my mother’s recipe for pancake syrup; again, this requires only ingredients that can be part of your food storage.

Here’s the pancake recipe.  It will make four to six pancakes depending on the size.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup all purpose, or whole wheat, or fresh ground flour

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1/4  teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar, honey, molasses, etc

water

1 tablespoon shortening, lard, or oil

Yes, that’s all there is to it.

Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar together.

Add water a little at a time, stirring until the batter is a little thicker than heavy cream

Use shortening, lard or oil to grease your skillet or griddle

Pour out batter onto griddle in pancake size pools

Cook until bubbles form in the top of batter and burst

Flip pancakes over and brown the other side

Stack pancakes on a plate

Add butter, margarine, or butter spray if desired

Cover with syrup

Eat and enjoy

The great thing about this recipe, other than tasting good, is that you can pre-mix the dry ingredients and carry them trail camping.  Another alternative is to by self-rising flour which is nothing but flour, salt, and baking powder already mixed together.  My friend that taught me how to make this kind of pancakes always carried some brown sugar on the trail.  He would mix a little water with the brown sugar to make syrup.  Not as good as maple flavored syrup, but not bad at all.

When I was a kid there was no way that we could afford fresh maple syrup.  Mama made our pancake syrup.  Here’s her recipe:

Ingredients:

2 cups white sugar

1 cup water (yeah, that's right, twice as much sugar as water)

1 teaspoon of maple flavored extract

Mix sugar and water in a cooking pot

Heat over a low flame. Do not boil

Stir as the mixture heats until sugar is dissolved

Add maple flavored extract and stir

That’s all there is to it.  Enjoy.