Charming and Cheap

When we were first married, every Saturday morning we made pancakes.   I love Saturday morning pancakes.  We tried several different recipes but found that Bisquick worked just fine. 

When our children were old enough to eat people food, I started cooking scrambled eggs (usually just for them) and the occassional frozen waffle or a bowl of low-sugar cereal.   Pancakes are still a Saturday morning treat. 

When my husband went through a season of unemployment, he got me hooked on hot breakfast.   For a first month we ate scrambled eggs, and scrambled eggs with sausage, and scrambled eggs with cream cheese, and scrambled eggs with sausage AND cream cheese.  Needless to say, I grew weary of… scrambled eggs. 

We did eat some pancakes even during the week, but I always felt like there was a nutritional deficit with my Bisquick mix.   I have hypoglycemia so I have to be very careful… white flour (and sugar) make me cranky.   If items have whole wheat, I don’t get the crash afterwards. 

So I figured, I’m a smart mommy, surely there’s a homemade biscuit mix recipe!  What do you know, I found one!  Now I know that most of you, dear readers, are quite Google (and Swagbucks) savvy, and you can look up these recipes yourself.  But before I post them, I test them.  If it’s a bad recipe, I don’t post it. 

I did make some modifications to the online recipe I found…

• Even though I’m a Southern girl, I just don’t care for Crisco.  For me, it’s not a health thing, it’s a texture thing.  I used Canola Oil instead.  It was a great substitute, but you don’t need as much oil as hydrogenated fat so I accounted for that in the recipe.  Butter would work great also.

• My biggest change was that I use whole wheat pastry flour.  It has a much lighter texture than regular whole wheat flour and you can use it in all of your baking as a 1:1 substitute for all purpose flour.  If you can’t get your hands on whole wheat pastry flour or it’s more than you’re willing to pay for it, you can use a 1:1 mix of whole wheat flour and cake flour.  In my Baking Mix, I used a mix of regular flour and the whole wheat pastry flour to save a little bit more dough (he he).

I hope you like it:  Whole Wheat Baking Mix.   You can use it just the way that you used Bisquick for all these years: topping pot pies, pancakes, biscuits, etc…

Now, I make pancakes more often.  They’re good for me and the kids gobble them up.

According to my math, this cost me around $0.75/lb.  At Safeway, Bisquick is $1.20/lb.  If you buy the ingredients at your local grocery store, you may not get the savings I do.   But if you have access to bulk goods,  you’ll have a good time saving beaucoups bucks. 

And… no pancake is complete without SYRUP.  But syrup can seriously break the bank!  I like the real deal as much as anyone, but I draw the line somewhere!  $17/pint!  Are you serious?  So I made the Hillbilly Housewife’s homemade syrup .

• I will use less molasses next time.  You don’t have to use it at all according to the Mapleine recipe. 

• As a self-respecting Southerner, I cannot condone the use of imitation butter anything.  Instead, I make my mom’s Seleta Syrup… sweet memories.

Have fun saving money! 

Coming soon: homemade laundry detergent and more about how I shop.