Chocolate Chip Buttermilk Pancakes

Dry:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 tbls sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
Wet:
1 1/2 cups buttermilk or clabbered milk
3 tbls butter, melted
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (I only used 1/4)

chocolate chips, maybe a cup

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. In another bowl, combine the wet ingredients. Mix the wet ingredients quickly into the dry ingredients. Don't over beat. Give just enough quick strokes with a whisk to barely moisten the dry ingredients. Ignore small lumps. Preheat a griddle to medium, medium-high. Melt some butter on it and pour light 1/4 cups of the batter on. When bubbles start to form and break put on some chocolate chips then flip. Cook till done. Serve immediately.

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I know I've mentioned before that I love pancakes. But what makes pancakes better? Chocolate, baby. Buttermilk helps too. But chocolate. I could bathe in chocolate chip pancakes. I wouldn't get clean, I suppose, but I would enjoy the hell out of it. Anyway, I believe this recipe is from The Joy of Cooking originally. All I did to it was cut the vanilla in half (I didn't want it to be too strong a flavor) and add the chocolate chips. It's a great recipe. The pancakes are tender, fluffy and very flavorful. They also freeze really well. Just wrap them tightly in some foil once they're fully cooled and toss them in the freezer. Then whenever you want some pancakes pull a couple out, microwave them for maybe twenty seconds or so and there you go. They aren't as good as they are fresh, obviously, but they are better than the boxed ones and the speed can't be beat. So here's how you do it.

First, you want to put your flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar and salt in a bowl. Whisk it up. Then in a separate bowl put your buttermilk (or clabbered milk), eggs, vanilla and melted butter.More whisking. Now dump the dry stuff into the wet stuff and whisk it just enough to moisten the flour. Little lumps are fine, they will cook out and if you over mix it the pancakes will be tough. And you don't want that. Now just pour some batter onto a preheated griddle. My griddle is pretty small (I think it's ten-twelve inches, but I can't find my tape measure so I don't know for sure) so I use light quarter cups. But if you have a bigger griddle or don't mind making only two pancakes at a time you can use more. Now here is a big pancake trick. You want to let them cook till bubbles start breaking. See this? You want to give it maybe ten more seconds after that point. I had what I thought was a good shot of exactly the time to flip, but it turned out to be blurry. And getting that crappy pic caused me to overcook one of them too. See the sacrifices I make for you guys? Heh. Anyway, when the bubbles start breaking you want to put the chocolate chips on and flip 'em. Then give them another thirty seconds or so (I usually rip a hole in one with a fork to see if they're done) and that's that. Plop them on a plate, cut out a wedge so people can see the chocolate, put some syrup on there and it's breakfast. Or dinner. Or a snack. Or whatever kind of excuse you can make for eating them.