Ree Drummond’s Unusual Tip for Perfect Pancakes

The Pioneer Woman loves to make pancakes from scratch. The only problem is that most of the time she actually prefers the taste of boxed pancake mix. It’s a polarizing opinion, but not an uncommon one.

“I LOVE the experience of making pancakes from scratch, hearing them sizzle as I pour them onto a hot griddle, and watching everyone in my family gather around the stove and tell me how much they love me,” she wrote on her blog.

Get the recipe: Perfect Pancakes from Ree Drummond

“Making pancakes from scratch is the only way to go,” she said. “But there’s only one problem: pancakes made from scratch often don’t taste as good as those made from good box mixes, let alone those in pancake houses. Pancakes at home are often either too eggy…or too chewy and tough…or just too blah.”

That’s a real conundrum. She wants to make pancakes from scratch, but have them taste like they came from a box. When faced with a problem like that, there’s only one thing to do: Make a billion pancakes until you get a recipe that does both. It’s a good thing Ree loves pancakes.

After much testing, Ree found that the key to her perfect pancakes was a very traditional, old-fashioned pancake recipe using flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, eggs, milk, vanilla, and butter. But where most recipes call for all-purpose flour, she uses cake flour instead. She says it gives the pancakes that from-a-box fluffiness, but you still get the satisfaction and bragging rights of making them from scratch.

Buy now: Pillsbury Softasilk Cake Flour, $15 (the same kind Ree uses!)

Lightness and fluffiness are the gold standard of a good pancake recipe, and cake flour would certainly give them that lift without making them turn out too chewy. Martha Stewart warns against using cake flour for pancakes, because she says cake flour pancakes turn soggy when you put syrup on them, but that problem could potentially be solved by using a syrup puddle for dipping instead of pouring the syrup on top of the stack — or by just eating them a lot faster!

What do you think of Ree Drummond’s perfect cake flour pancakes?