The Best Pancake Recipes, According to Eater Editors

Finding a good pancake recipe is weirdly harder than it should be: Breakfast’s ultimate simple starchy pleasure can come in all manners of different flours, require different dairy products, and in recent years, have gone the way of full protein in many people’s approach. But Eater editors, as per usual, have their time-tested go-to versions, which you too can flip out over, below:

Blueberry yogurt multigrain pancakes: I was generally of the belief that you didn’t need a recipe for pancakes. Just mix up some stuff in a bowl, pour it on a hot griddle, and see if it, well, pancaked. I don’t know what led me to this Smitten Kitchen recipe in the first place, but I still make them when the morning calls for a little something extra. Yogurt in place of buttermilk, a mix of grains like rye and whole wheat, and a helluva lot of lemon zest give these incredible flavor and texture — they really put the cake in pancake, if you know what I mean. Plus, there’s something very satisfying about squooshing individual berries into the half-cooked pancakes before flipping. — Lesley Suter, travel editor

Chez Ma Tante’s pancakes: I was always a basic box pancake kind of guy before I tried making [Brooklyn restaurant] Chez Ma Tante’s recipe. I’m usually not a great recipe follower, but if I can achieve success, so can you. The recipe has a ton of butter in it: There is clarified butter in the batter, you add butter in the pan for frying, and you top it with butter. It’s really a great way to start your morning. — Stephen Pelletteri, executive producer

Banana pancakes with coconut and jaggery: Jaggery continues to be an under-appreciated sweetener in the U.S., so I’m taking this opportunity to highlight its glorious fudgyness in a pancake recipe that’s a weekend staple in my house. This recipe from the British cookbook writer Meera Sodha (it’s featured in her 2015 book Made in India) is closer to a stuffed crepe than a traditional pancake, and its soft and thin exterior is the ideal conduit for the rich filling made with desiccated coconut, sliced bananas, warming ground cardamom, and of course a generous amount of jaggery to bind it all together. Sodha recommends having it with crème fraîche or some shrikhand, the sweet Indian dish made with strained yogurt, but really this caramel-y pancake can be rolled up and consumed entirely on its own. — Tanay Warekarar, Eater NY reporter

Orange yogurt pancakes: I’ve always loved pancakes, but the recipes I used were interchangeable until I found this winner in Edible Twin Cities from Minneapolis-based blogger Stephanie Meyer. The batter is starkly different than runny buttermilk. But the viscous mixture results in towering cakes with a tangy, tender center. The edges get almost a crispy lacework from all the butter and fat. It’s both sophisticated and so simple to make. These are cakes for the pancake elite. — Joy Summers, Eater Twin Cities editor

Perfect buttermilk pancakes: I make Alison Roman’s Perfect Buttermilk Pancakes every Saturday for my kids: They are very good and easy for the kids to make with me (not very many ingredients) and have turned me into a person who now always has buttermilk in the fridge. I used to avoid recipes with buttermilk, because who has buttermilk? Now I do. I always have buttermilk. — Amanda Kludt, editor in chief

The Pioneer Woman’s lemon pancakes: I feel fine admitting that the first time I made these pancakes was to pay homage to Harry and Meghan’s lemon wedding cake while my sister and I watched their royal wedding from many miles away. These pancakes — at their best when cooked on a cast iron — are light as heck every time with just the right amount of acid. It’s a must-do recipe if you’re a citrus-y sweets fiend like myself, and Harry and Meghan. Don’t skip the lemon zest topping: When the zest links up with the butter and syrup it’s almost as good as getting a bite from a breakfast plate where you get a little sausage, a little egg, and a little syrup — just blissful. — Patty Diez, project manager

Phoenician buttermilk pancakes with pecan honey butter: Pancakes are a blessing and a curse. I love them but eating them almost always results in a complete sugar crash by mid afternoon wherein everyone around me is punished by my sudden, terrible mood. Because of this, I only make them on rare occasions (days when there’s nothing important to ruin) and go all out with the fluffiest buttermilk diner-style pancakes I can manage, using a recipe from The Phoenicia Diner Cookbook. While nothing can beat the satisfaction of consuming them at an actual diner, these pancakes are almost as good coming off your own stove. Instead of the pecan butter, I just go with regular butter and maple syrup. The batter also holds up great with the addition of blueberries or chocolate chips. — Madeleine Davies, Eater.com daily editor

King Arthur’s gluten-free pancake mix: Look, I’m a documented believer in box mixes and if you still aren’t, the King Arthur gluten-free pancake mix will convince you. I actually got these accidentally, not even noticing the gluten-free label, but they routinely create pancakes that are cheerily fluffy yet delicate and crisp, with a warm, toasty flavor that plays so well with add-ins like sliced bananas or raisins. I think I’ll make some this weekend. — Hillary Dixler Canavan, restaurant editor