Sour Milk (Buttermilk) Griddle Cakes is a vintage recipe that still stands turns out the fluffiest, foolproof pancakes every time.
My mother-in-law Mary Lou always makes the best, fluffiest pancakes. She uses her mother’s recipe for “Sour Milk Griddle Cakes” that came from her days back on the farm in northern Minnesota.
Growing up, she remembers her mother Charlotte making these pancakes often—sometimes in the size of a silver dollar, never too big but always in a plentiful supply.
“Mom made pancakes a lot, and we could eat as many as we wanted,” said Mary Lou. “We had cows so there was always milk available, and she bought flour in 100-pound bags for bread-making every week so, needless to say, we had the right ingredients.”
Sweet or Sour?
Looking through one of Charlotte’s old recipe books, there are recipes that call for “sweet milk” while others, like these pancakes, list “sour milk” as an ingredient. Mary Lou explained that sweet milk meant regular drinking milk. For sour milk, her mom would put a tablespoon of vinegar in sweet milk. Isn’t this the same thing as buttermilk? Well, yes, but back then buttermilk wasn’t readily available and would require a trip to the store—something that wasn’t very common back them.
“We didn’t shop for groceries. We picked, canned and froze garden fruit and went into the woods to get blueberries, currents, goose berries, juneberries, high-bush cranberries and chokecherries,” she said. “The garden had any vegetable we would eat, potatoes, corn and more. Occasionally, we’d buy crates of peaches, apricots and plums, and the Watkins salesman made his rounds on a schedule where we could buy ingredients. Plus, we got cheese and ice cream at the creamery where Dad sold milk from our cows.”
Mary Lou remembers topping her mom’s pancakes with butter and homemade syrup made by heating up Watkins maple extract with some sugar. Homemade jelly or jam was always on the table as well, and leftover pancakes were often eaten as a snack with butter and sugar.
With pancakes this good, I am surprised there were ever any leftovers!
