This fluffy pancake recipe creates perfectly soft and light pancakes, with a golden-brown edge, ready to soak up all your favorite toppings. Best of all, they are made with pantry staple ingredients and are ready to enjoy in just 20 minutes!
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Why We Love Fluffy Pancakes
My family is obsessed with eating pancakes! I’ve published a bunch of homemade pancake recipes of different varieties over the years because they’re the best breakfast. Pillowy, warm pastries, that are easy to make, layered with butter and maple syrup – what’s not to love? With that being said, these fluffy pancakes will always remain the most highly requested by my kids. Here’s why I never mind fulfilling that request:
- Easy to Make: With just a handful of simple ingredients, you can have these pancakes on the table in no time. No fancy techniques required!
- Fluffy Texture: These pancakes are incredibly light and airy, thanks to a few key ingredients that give them that perfect rise.
- Great for Leftovers: Make extra and freeze them for a quick and easy breakfast during the week.
- Beautifully Golden: The pancakes come out with a lovely golden-brown color and crispy edges.
Want more pancake recipes? Try these low carb pancakes or these banana chocolate chip pancakes!
Key Ingredients
Below you will find helpful notes for key ingredients used to make this recipe for fluffy pancakes. Scroll down to the recipe card below for the full ingredient list and exact amounts!
- All-Purpose Flour: It’s best to measure this by spooning the flour into a measuring cup. If you dunk the cup straight into the bag, you end up really packing it in there.
- Baking Powder: Make sure it’s not expired! Always double check the label before using this ingredient.
- Granulated Sugar: Light brown sugar also works.
- Whole Milk: You can also use other kinds of milk, including plant based milks.
How To Make Fluffy Pancakes
The only tools you need in this pancake recipe is a bowl, a whisk, and a non-stick pan or griddle! Below is a quick recipe overview, but please scroll to the recipe card at the bottom of this post for the full instructions.
- Mix The Dry Ingredients: Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
- Add The Wet Ingredients: Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add in the milk, vanilla, egg, and butter. Whisk until smooth. Don’t over-mix!
- Prepare: Heat a griddle or a large non-stick pan over medium heat. Add a little butter, oil, or spray.
- Cook The Pancakes: Pour ¼ cup of batter onto the heated pan or griddle and cook until bubbles appear on the surface. Flip and cook until browned on the other side.
Chef’s Tips & Variations
- Thin out the batter: Batter too thick? Add a teaspoon of milk at a time until it has thinned out enough.
- Thicken the batter: Batter too thin? Add a teaspoon of flour at a time until you’ve reached the right consistency. Be careful not to over-mix.
- Low to medium heat: You’ll know the griddle or pan is the right temperature when a droplet of water sizzles when dropped on the heat. If your pan is too hot, your pancakes will cook too fast on the outside and be raw on the inside.
- Butter the pan: This helps them not to stick, and also adds flavor!
- Sift together the dry ingredients: I know this is a little bit of annoyance, but it is so worth it to make fluffy pancakes! It’s a key step that you do not want to skip if you want your pancakes to be fluffy!
- Get the batter just right: The best pancake batter has been mixed just until the wet and dry ingredients have just come together. You’ll see a good amount of bubbles when the batter is ready. There will be lumps in the batter, but that’s a good thing! It means the batter hasn’t been over or under mixed and the pancakes will turn out fluffy.
- Add-ins: Chocolate chips, nuts, sprinkles, the possibilities are endless!
What to Serve with Fluffy Pancakes
- Toppings: Butter and syrup are the classics! Of course, you could always have fun with something like chocolate sauce or pecan praline sauce. The sky’s the limit!
- Breakfast: Fill up your plate with more classic breakfast goodies like bacon and scrambled eggs.
Storing, Reheating & Freezing
- Storing: Keep them in a plastic bag or airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
- Reheating: Reheat in the microwave (or very lightly in the toaster) and enjoy! Just be careful, pancakes reheat very quickly.
- Freezing: When I freeze homemade pancakes, I make sure and place a layer of parchment paper in between each pancake. This will keep them from sticking to each other once frozen. You can thaw them overnight in the fridge or microwave them straight from the freezer! They’ll stay good in the freezer for up to 3 months.
Fluffy Pancake Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour, sifted
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 1 ¼ cups whole milk
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- 3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
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Instructions
- In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.
- Make a well in the center and add in the milk, vanilla extract, egg and melted butter. Whisk until smooth, do not over mix.
- Heat a griddle or large frying pan over medium heat. Add a little butter, oil or cooking spray.
- Pour batter (I do 1/4 cup batter at a time) onto hot pan, and cook until bubbles appear on the surface. Flip with a spatula, and cook until browned on the other side.
- Serve warm with maple syrup! Store any leftovers in airtight bag in the refrigerator and heat in microwave.
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I love the recipe. Perfect outcome. My family love it! Thank you very much for sharing your passion and knowledge. Gos bless you.
These are the best pancakes I’ve ever had!
Whoa, game over! Thanks for the recipe, best pancakes I’ve ever made.
I made these pancakes for breakfast this morning. It was a big hit. It was so fluffy and went very well with the bananas. (Those were the only fruits available.lol)
Thank u very much.
Have made these a few times now, super easy and uncomplicated as the ingredients are always in my pantry! I really enjoy how fluffy they are and the delicious buttery flavour if using it to cook the pancakes. Thanks for sharing!
These are delicious, love the vanilla flavor.
Do you have to use whole milk?
It provides the best final result, but you can use any milk product you like!
Well, I can say vanilla extract isn’t an every day ingredient. Pure vanilla is extremely expensive. And if you have lumps in your batter, that means you haven’t incorporated (mixed) the flour and other dry ingredients enough…it’s not a good thing. That’s also a ridiculous amount of baking powder, no matter how you try to spin it. I suggest people use less that that and compare the results.
What type of butter is used? Salted or unsalted?
Either is fine because there is such little butter used. But if you want to be extra safe, use unsalted!
This recipe looks great! I’m a big fan of your low carb pancake recipe but my husband wants the real deal. I’m going to try these, I’m just a little confused about the serving size. It says serves 4, serving is 1 pancake. This looks like it’ll make more than 4 pancakes though. Either way, thanks for your yummy recipes. Been a fan for years!
Hi Terri! The recipe says it serves 4 people and the serving size for nutrition facts is showing the nutrition for 1 of the 4 servings.
This recipe will make more than 4 pancakes! For me this recipe makes about 12 pancakes (about 4-5 inches across). Hope this helps!
I just saw your reply haha. Yes this helps! Thank you