Okay, once again, we start off with store-bought stuff and tweak it into something better!
2 cups Great Value Pancake & Waffle Mix (They claim this makes 12-18 pancakes, but that's only if they're the size of silver dollars. I like BIG pancakes.)
1/2 cup cold water
At this point, what you add depends on the type of pancake you're making:
Plain/Banana/Chocolate Chip: 1 cup of milk + as much banana or chips as you like
Berry: 1 cup of milk, 1 tablespoon of store-bought honey, and a double-handful of fresh or thawed berries
Apple: 1/2 cup of milk, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/2 cup of applesauce, and chopped baked apples (Fresh apples would be hard as a rock even after cooking; baking them is a must. Core them, bake them in an oven at 350 for 11 minutes, allow them to cool for a bit, take the skin off, and chop them up)
Whisk your lumps out and keep going until the batter is kind of frothy/bubbly. Should be fairly thick, not thin and runny.
Heat a griddle to 250 or frying pan to medium-low heat and melt some real salted butter in there. Ladle in a healthy amount of your batter and let it fry until the side facing up looks like it's fairly firm and has a bunch of little holes on it where bubbles formed and popped. Turn down the heat a hair, add a little more butter to the pan and flip once. The milk will give the pancake a great crisp to it while still leaving the inside soft. No matter what kind of syrup you normally use, try this: spring for some local honey and throw a tablespoon of it in a pot with your syrup. Heat it gently and stir constantly for just a couple of minutes.
