Red Velvet Pancakes Recipe (Made With Cake Mix) - Fresh April Flours (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret of amazing pancakes? ›

Tips for the Perfect Pancakes

Baking soda should be no more than six months old. Stir the batter only until the wet and dry ingredients are incorporated; overbeating will make pancakes tough and chewy instead of fluffy. No Buttermilk, No Problem!

The combination of homemade buttermilk (milk and vinegar) and two leaveners (baking powder and baking soda) create lots of air bubbles in the pancake batter, resulting in the lightest and fluffiest pancakes imaginable.

Pancakes and waffles typically both contain baking soda, which causes them to rise. As soon as the baking soda is combined with the wet ingredients (which contain an acidic ingredient, like often buttermilk), it starts producing carbon dioxide gas bubbles that cause the batter to rise.

Flat pancakes are nearly always because of expired baking powder, too little baking powder for the recipe size, or too thin of a batter. How to fix flat pancakes: First, test your baking powder by adding a teaspoon of baking powder in a glass and adding a tablespoon of water or two.

Restaurants use better quality ingredients

However, along with that ease, you may be taking a hit in the overall taste department. Restaurants tend to use real, farm-fresh eggs and real milk when making their pancakes, which as you might guess, adds to a richer, higher-quality eating experience.

Adding baking powder is the easiest way to make fluffy pancakes. There's more than one way to make the bubbles that make a pancake fluffy, but the easiest way is by adding a raising agent such as baking powder.

Using extra virgin olive oil in place of the melted butter in this recipe adds moisture in addition to flavor, resulting in a light and fluffy pancake that's perfectly tender and moist, not dry or doughy in the least.

Flour is the main ingredient to any pancake. It provides the structure. Different types of flours alter the structure because some flours absorb more moisture or create more gluten (which binds the structure together) than others.

Gluten, which is found in flour, keeps pancakes from falling apart. Gluten, a type of protein, forms a “spiderweb” within baked goods, giving them structure. As the starches gelatinize, and turn from a batter to bread, the gluten strands hold them in place.

Note that mayonnaise contains eggs and oil, so it can replace oil or butter as well. This trick may not work as an egg replacement for an allergy or egg-free diet (unless it's a vegan mayo) but it works for those who don't have eggs on hand in a pinch.

What happens if you add an extra egg to pancake mix? ›

As the pancakes cook the proteins form a network and tense up, becoming rigid and providing that structure. A word of caution though — if you add too many eggs you'll end up with a loose pancake batter that will need to be balanced with more pancake mix.

Baking powder (double acting) provides two rises: The first occurs when the baking powder comes into contact with a liquid, the second when it's exposed to heat. Too much baking powder will create a very puffy pancake with a chalky taste, while too little will make it flat and limp.

While the griddles themselves likely vary from one diner chain to the next, diners are pretty much all working with a waffle iron or griddle that's already piping hot. IHOP, for instance, requires its pans to be heated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and uses Crisco instead of butter to grease them, says Grimm.