Good Morning, Sunshine

A plate of perfection awaits The Husband.

What’s better than waking up to a home-cooked breakfast?

I’m sure The Husband can tell you all about it.

Because that lucky son-of-a-gun awoke one fine morning to the scent of fluffy chocolate chip pancakes, sizzling and perfectly browned sausage, fresh sweet strawberries and a just-brewed pot of coffee, courtesy of his Cooking Sugar Momma known as me or Doll, as The Husband says.

His timing was so perfect, too. He literally appeared all scruffy and sleepy-eyed in our sun-filled kitchen as soon as yours truly flipped off the oven and poured him a cup of brew.

Timing is everything, right?

The Husband does get major points for helping a sista out with cleanup. (He pretty much did 90 percent of that, well maybe 75 percent.)

So my chocolate chip pancakes rock. They rock the Casbah, actually.

I basically take the pancake recipe of my favorite cooking goddess in the entire land known as Nigella Lawson, and throw in some mini chocolate chips for good and sweet measure. The pancake recipe appears in her book, “How to be a Domestic Goddess.” In a twist of fate perfect for the universe, this book was betrothed to me by my beloved Husband (then The Deliriously Head-Over-Heels-in-Love Boyfriend) on Valentine’s Day. It is my favorite cookbook of all time, and girlfriend has a bajillion cookbooks.

I suppose you could make pancakes in the old average Americana way – with a box of Bisquick or other said mix or you can drive your lazy bootie to IHOP or Denny’s. But, the homemade style. Yeah, it’s so worth your time.

So you need to measure a few things. Is that really so painful?

I will give you a heads up that I am providing you with the recipe verbatim from the cookbook. If you are not used to Nigella’s recipe writing style, this may throw you for a loop. And upon, re-reading it at the moment, I realize she doesn’t really explain everything specifically.

First of all, put all the dry ingredients in a bowl (I use the awesome mixing bowls from William-Sonoma that have a spout, so it’s easy to pour the batter onto the griddle). Whisk the dry ingredients together, then add the wet ingredients and beat together with a wooden spoon.

When you are ready to fry up the pancakes, melt a dollop of butter in your pan or griddle over medium-high heat. Once it’s melted and sizzling, pour your batter onto the griddle.

(After a minute, sprinkle the pancakes with chocolate chips. Once the batter bubbles a bit, you may flip your pancake over.)

And you of course may serve the pancakes with powdered sugar and/or maple syrup. Actually, that's a requirement.

American Breakfast Pancakes
From “How to be a Domestic Goddess”
By Nigella Lawson

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 tsp. sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
2 Tbsp. butter, melted and cooled
1 ½ cup milk
Butter for frying

The easiest way to make these is to put all the ingredients into a blender and blitz. But if you do mix up the batter by hand in a bowl, make a well in the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar, beat in the eggs, melted butter, and milk and transfer to a pitcher: it’s much easier to pour the batter into the pan than to spoon it. I like to leave the batter for 20 minutes before using it; and you may want to add more milk to the mixture if you’re frying in the blini pan, so that it runs right to the edges.

When you cook the pancakes, all you need to remember is that when the upper side of the pancake is blistering and bubbling it’s time to cook the second side, and this needs only about 1 minute if that.

I get 11 blini-pan-sized pancakes out of this, maybe 16 silver-dollar-sized ones on the griddle.

Please Note: The Jersey Girl adds mini chocolate chips after pouring the batter into pancakes on the griddle and before she flips them over to brown the other side. She also uses extra-large eggs.