Even though brain activity burns around 20% of the calories in your body, the need for good food is often neglected among physicists. This results in pale creatures loitering in front of blackboards mumbling stuff that not even their peers can understand. Here is your way out with the most delicious and healthy pancakes you’ve ever seen.

Required background: Hunger.

---

Good food is important, but, shockingly, it receives no attention in the acknowledgement section of scientific papers. Exceptions confirm the rule, of course, and Nicole Yunger Halpern is honest enough to acknowledge in her Quantum Steampunk book that it was only “the muffins that fueled [her] eight o’clock writing sessions on weekend mornings” (although I wouldn’t recommend writing a book after only 3 hours of sleep, but who knows what was in the muffins…).

Anyway, here is my American Pancakes recipe that I’ve tweaked to perfection with a few (healthy!) variations.

Ingredients

The following amounts are perfect for two very hungry people:

• 300 gram wholemeal flour (I use spelt flour), which is the first main difference compared to standard recipes that use wheat flour. Believe me, it not only tastes better!

Why wholemeal?

You’ve probably heard that wheat flour is not as healthy, but who cares, right? Well, the same for me, until I’ve learned the fact that the nutritional value of wheat flour is soooo low that many countries enforce by law the addition of minerals and vitamins (this is called fortification). Indeed, while some people like to celebrate the invention of modern wheat as banning hunger in the world, one should at least not forget that more than 2 billion people are affected by hidden hunger (that is, you have enough calories but lack minerals, vitamins, etc.), in addition to other agricultural and environmental problems related to modern wheat…

• 2-3 tea spoons of baking powder.
• 2 table spoons of brown cane sugar (another healthy and more delicious alternative to white industrial sugar).
• One package (or one table spoon) of vanilla sugar (that’s the next secret ingredient which gives much extra flavor).
• A dash of salt.
• 3 eggs.
• 250 milliliter of buttermilk. Sounds disgusting? Well, that’s a German thing. Contrary to what you might expect, it’s a side-product gained during the production of butter, which has naturally almost 0% fat and tastes a bit acidic and refreshing. Of course, you can also use normal or vegan milk, but I strongly recommend buttermilk if you can get it.

Cooking Instructions

• Gather all the ingredients.
• Mix and stir all the dry stuff together first.
• Then, add the eggs and milk and mix everything well. The final texture should be pretty viscous (like a thick but still liquid honey).
• With a bit of butter or sunflower oil, bake them in a pan at medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes from each side.

“Medium” heat?

Well, this will require some experimental field studies as for every good recipe. As a rule of thumb, if you use butter to bake the pancakes, medium heat means that the butter very quickly melts with some sizzling sound, but it should not instantly turn brown. That’s the perfect temperature!

Topping

When all pancakes are baked (if you like to perfect it, heat a bit the plate on which you have stacked all the pancakes), they are ready to be served. Except when it’s berry season, my favorite toppings are:

• Peanut butter.
• Maple syrup.
• Latwerge! That’s another German thing and perhaps comparable to plum butter with the difference that it is made of plums only (no added sugar) and soooo aromatic… I could tell you the secret recipe, but then I’d have to kill you. So go and find your own partner, whose mother is from northern-middle Germany and able to make it.

Enjoy your meal!