Sugar Is The Key To Better Store-Bought Pancakes Every Time

Don't let the pancake snobs dissuade you from buying your favorite boxed pancake mix. For mornings when you need something quick, delicious, and filling, having a stash of store-bought pancakes guarantees that you can have breakfast in just a few minutes, with not a lot of clean-up after. It's also easy to spruce up your boxed mix so your pancakes come out tasting and feeling as good as the ones made from scratch. Simply adding sugar can already enhance their flavor.

Pancake mixes already come with sugar, but using more won't only add to their sweetness but will also make them easier to brown and lightly crisp outside, thanks to the extra caramelization that happens. Sugar also makes pancakes fluffier: It binds itself with water and slows down the development of gluten. Gluten traps small air pockets in the batter that expand when exposed to heat, and sugar provides a good balance so that the pancakes remain tender even as they gain volume.

To maintain the right proportion of gluten and sugar in the pancake mix, add sugar a tablespoon at a time. You can add up to a quarter of a cup, but make sure to stir the mix after every tablespoon. You can also cook a test batch of pancakes whenever a small amount is added to check if the sweetness is to your taste. This method requires preparing an extra amount of batter, but it's a good one for finding the exact quantity of sugar to use.

Don't just stop at making your store-bought pancakes sweeter. Incorporate other flavorings, too, for an extra-special breakfast. Mix cinnamon with brown sugar to give the pancakes an autumnal flavor, using a ratio of ½ a teaspoon of cinnamon for every two tablespoons of sugar. You can also transform regular-flavored pancake into a chocolate-infused one by adding ¼ cup of unsweetened cocoa powder for every 1 ½ cups of pancake mix. Balance the bitterness of the cocoa with a couple of tablespoons of sugar. Just as we've advised earlier, cook test batches to discover the right ratio of flavorings that suit your preference.

Once you've perfected how much of these additions to use with your boxed pancake, the next time you prepare breakfast, do this extra step to make it taste even better: Sift the sugar and dry flavorings with the powdered pancake mix before pouring in the liquid ingredients. This will avoid clumps from forming once you add in the water (or, even better, swap it with buttermilk) and keep you from overmixing the batter. Over-stirring lets the air bubbles escape, and you need them to make the pancakes turn out fluffy.

To truly bring store-bought pancakes to gourmet territory, serve them with toppings. Granola is a store-bought ingredient that'll add texture as well as some extra flavor. With the variety of granolas available in the market, make your pancakes taste nutty, fruity, or just plain sweeter, depending on what you feel like having.