Can You Guess What These Masa Pancakes Are Missing?
Can You Guess What These Masa Pancakes Are Missing?
June 10, 2024
We're constantly honing our perfect masa pancake recipe: we've made them with a mix of corn and wheat flour, we've whipped egg whites, we've made them with olive oil. Our platonic pancake ideal, it turns out, has no wheat at all (making them gluten-free), and is practically a one-bowl recipe — so easy, you can throw them together on a bleary-eyed weekday morning. We've based the recipe on one from Kate Ramos at Hola Jalapeño (thanks, Kate!).
They also happen to be free of refined sugar (that bit of sweetness comes from honey), and can be made dairy free (use coconut oil in place of butter, and your choice of alt milk for the homemade buttermilk). Our yellow masa harina lends them a sunny golden hue, but white, blue, and red work just as well. However you make them, they'll cook up fluffy and tender, with perfectly crisp edges. The only question is: are they breakfast? Or breakfast-for-dinner?
All Comments
Hi Fred – great questions! With masa, there’s no gluten, so over-beating isn’t an issue, but mixing too much can affect the texture, making it too runny or airy. Just combine until smooth. Resting the batter helps, as it allows the masa to fully hydrate, which can improve texture and fluffiness. While not essential, it’s a good step. And we love your idea of adding vanilla extract and browning the butter! That’s such a simple way to elevate the flavor. Definitely giving it a try next time—sounds delicious!
Two questions:
-I know there is no gluten (duh!), but are there still any issues with “over-beating” masa batters? Is there anything else that could reduce tenderness and increase toughness?
-Out of habit, I let the batter rest for 30 minutes, and one commenter on a standard flour buttermilk pancake recipe scolded that you need to give buttermilk time to do its thing, or there’s no point in adding it. Do you think there’s a benefit to resting the batter before cooking?
Also a couple very optional tips:
-I’m adding vanilla extract
-Next time I might experiment with browning the butter first, because, hey, why not? Just adds an easy extra minute or two to melting the butter.
Insanely good! And gives another excuse to add blue corn to every meal :)
We found that adding a bit less oil and keeping the honey for serving rather than putting into the mix also works well.
Thank you for this recipe. Way better (and more affordable) than the store-bought gluten-free pancake mixes. Very easy to prepare too.
Hi Norah! Thanks for the feedback! We’ve just implemented customer comments, so if someone has commented, you should be able to find them within each blog post.
These are my new favorite pancakes. I’ve given up flour and sugar, for the most part, a while ago and so with those went pancakes. Very delicious, satisfying, and remarkably sustaining. They heat up well in the toaster the next day too.
Everything is done at a very high standard on this website. I enjoy it lots. Thank you.