IHOP Strawberry Banana Pancakes

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The mistake is in the name. "Strawberry banana pancakes" sounds like pancakes with strawberry and banana in them, so people mash banana into the batter and wonder why the results are dense and slightly gummy.

The fruit is a topping. It goes on the stack, with a strawberry sauce, and the pancake underneath is a plain buttermilk pancake. That is how the restaurant does it and it is the only way the texture works.

Why banana ruins the batter

Banana is mostly water and starch and it brings no gluten and no structure. Add enough to taste of banana and you have diluted the batter with a heavy purée that weighs the crumb down.

It also browns fast — the sugars in ripe banana catch on a griddle long before the middle of the pancake is set, so you get dark outsides and raw centres.

The buttermilk pancake underneath

Two things matter and neither is the recipe:

Do not overmix. Lumps are correct. Stir until the flour has just disappeared and stop — every extra stir develops gluten, and gluten makes pancakes chewy.

Rest the batter 10 minutes. The flour hydrates, the bicarbonate starts working, and the batter thickens to the consistency that gives you a tall pancake rather than a flat one.

What you need

For the pancakes

• 250 g plain flour
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 420 ml buttermilk
• 2 large eggs
• 60 g butter, melted and cooled
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

For the topping

• 400 g strawberries, hulled and halved
• 3 tbsp granulated sugar
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 2 bananas, sliced just before serving
• whipped cream

Method

1. Strawberry sauce first. Half the strawberries with the sugar and lemon in a small pan, 6–8 minutes, crushing them as they soften. Cool. Stir the remaining fresh strawberries through at the end so there is fruit as well as sauce.
2. Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate and salt.
3. Whisk the buttermilk, eggs, melted butter and vanilla separately.
4. Pour wet into dry and stir about ten times. Leave the lumps.
5. Rest 10 minutes.
6. Griddle on medium — not high. A ladleful per pancake.
7. Flip when the bubbles on the surface start to pop and stay open, about 2–3 minutes. Another 1–2 minutes on the second side.
8. Stack, spoon over the strawberry sauce, then the sliced banana, then cream.

Slice the banana at the last moment

Cut bananas brown within minutes. Slicing them onto the plate as you serve is not fussiness — a bowl of banana slices prepared ten minutes ahead looks grey by the time it reaches the table.

A squeeze of lemon slows it if you must prep ahead, at the cost of tasting faintly of lemon.

Medium heat, and why

High heat sets the outside before the raising agents have finished working, so the pancake stops rising and you get a dense middle with a dark crust. Medium gives the bicarbonate time to do its job all the way through.

The first pancake is always a test. Accept it.

Storing

Pancakes keep three days in the fridge and reheat well in a toaster. They freeze for two months with parchment between them.

The strawberry sauce keeps a week refrigerated. Bananas do not keep at all — slice them fresh.