Being home in our new kitchen (although not fully finished) has had both my mom and me cooking and baking nonstop. I had been craving chocolate-chip pancakes since I had them at my family's house in Portland over choir tour, but since we were out of eggs yesterday, fate had me wait until today to make them.

Granted, there is always something that goes wrong, and this morning it was an extreme lack of buttermilk. If you ever run into this problem, fear not! An easy substitute is to mix one tablespoon white distilled vinegar with one cup milk (this counts as 1 cup of buttermilk). Of course it's never ideal to have to substitute key ingredients, but it gets the job done!

Recipe from none other than Cooking Light.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups low-fat buttermilk (*So if you don't have any, like me, this would be 1 TBS vinegar and up to the 1 and 1/2 cup line of milk)
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 large egg
• 1 large egg white
• Cooking spray
• 3/4 cup maple syrup
• 3 tablespoons butter

Preparation

• Lightly spoon flours into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl, stirring with a whisk. Combine buttermilk, oil, egg, and egg white, stirring with a whisk; add to flour mixture, stirring just until moist.
• Heat a nonstick griddle or nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium heat. Spoon about 1/4 cup batter per pancake onto griddle. Turn pancakes over when tops are covered with bubbles and edges look cooked. Serve with syrup and butter.

**I also added 1 TBS cocoa powder, a helping of chocolate chips, and then for the final product I sliced fresh strawberries with light powdered sugar on top. Another great option I tried was one half of a sliced banana on top, drizzled with maple syrup. It was to die for.
**Note, although they weren't as moist (ah I said moist!!!) as they would have been with the real buttermilk, I found that I didn't feel half as lethargic after eating them. You know, the Oh my goodness, I have three pancakes sitting in my stomach now feeling.

(Sorry for lack of quality in pictures, too. My phone's camera is all I have currently...RIP digital Sony from eighth grade..)

 Enjoy!!