Bisquick Pancakes – sort of

I’ve had this neat little pdf file, I can’t remember where I first got it, but it has recipes to approximate a number of famous brand recipes.  One of them is for Bisquick.  We used to have the jumbo boxes of this stuff at home when I was a kid.  The boxes were covered with quick and easy recipes you could make using the product.  I thought for this weeks pancakes I’d go for that style.  (when I lived in Madison, I’d get the big 10 lb bag of Krusteaz from Sam’s Club.  I never thought of it as ‘crust ease’ but like Krusty the Clown on the Simpsons).  According to my pdf, Bisquick is approximately:

8 Cups Flour
1 1/4 Cups Nonfat Dry Milk Powder
1/4 Cup Baking Powder (4 Tblsp)
1 Tablespoon Salt
2 Cups Shortening

Combine flour, milk, baking powder, and salt in a very large bowl.
Cut in shortening until it resembles coarse cornmeal. Store in tightly
closed covered container in a cool place. Makes about 10 cups.

I cut the recipe down by 1/4.  I’ve always taken “shortening” to mean hydrogenated vegetable oils like Crisco – which I won’t eat if I can help it.  I used butter – chopped into pieces and mixed with the flour in a food processor.  The butter was another reason to cut down the recipe.  I didn’t think the shelf life would be very long unless I kept it in the fridge, and my food processor can only blend so much at a time.  I also used wholemeal flour.

The pancake recipe, that you can get on the box or off the web, is 2 cups mix + 2 beaten eggs + 1 cup milk.  Easy.  I don’t think mine were as fluffy as my Aunt Joan used to make (Crisco and all-purpose flour will give you more fluff), but they had the right flavour.