Pancake Muffins — Sunday Morning Before the Big Pot

Sancocho week. The week the temperature teased us — fifty-three degrees on Tuesday, a miracle, the first day of the year where the sun felt like a thing and not an abstract concept — and then snapped back to twenty-nine on Thursday because Hartford is a liar. Sancocho is the soup for both temperatures. Sancocho is the soup for everything.

Sancocho, for anyone who has not had it, is a stew that has all the things. Plantains, yautía, batata (sweet potato), yuca, green bananas, corn on the cob cut into rounds, beef short ribs, chicken thighs, pork chunks if you have them, the whole alphabet of the tuber family, all swimming in a broth the color of a Caribbean sunset because of the achiote, seasoned with sofrito because everything is seasoned with sofrito, finished with cilantro and a squeeze of lime.

It is not a weeknight dish. It takes three hours. It uses every pot in the kitchen. The peeling alone takes forty minutes. But on Saturday, with a cold house and a warm pot and fifteen people coming for Sunday dinner, it is the soup that announces the event.

Rosa drove up with Carlos and Camila on Saturday for a weekend stay — they needed a break from the New Haven apartment, which is small, and I had the guest room ready. Miguel Jr. and Jenny brought the kids over on Sunday. Lucas (three) watched me peel yuca and asked why the root looked like a baseball bat. I said, "Because God made vegetables weird, mijo." He accepted this explanation because Lucas accepts all theological explanations, for now.

Isabella (twenty months) sat on the floor with a wooden spoon and a pot and made sancocho on the kitchen floor with no ingredients. It was perhaps her first cooking. I did not interrupt. Eduardo put a towel down to catch what she was about to spill. Marriage is preparedness.

Camila (four months) slept through dinner, as four-month-olds do, swaddled on Rosa's chest. I watched Rosa spoon sancocho around the sleeping baby and I remembered eating around Miguel Jr. when he was that age, and around Rosa when she was that age, and around David, and around Sofía, and I realized: this is the entire motherhood. Eating around a baby. Managing the spoon and the shoulder. Finding the rhythm that does not wake the sleeping thing. For twelve years of my life I ate like this. Rosa has decades left.

Mami could not come — the walk up the front steps was too icy, even with the sand Eduardo put down, and I did not want to risk her falling — so I made a big container of sancocho and drove it over to her apartment after dinner. She ate half a bowl while I sat with her, and she said, "This has too much yuca." I said, "You love yuca, Mami." She said, "Not this much." We argued about it for ten minutes. It was the best ten minutes of the week. Wepa.

The sancocho was always the Sunday event, but Saturday night and Sunday morning still had to be fed — and with Rosa and the kids in the guest room and Miguel Jr.’s crew arriving before noon, I needed something that could come out of the oven without my full attention, because my full attention was already on the broth. These pancake muffins are what I made Sunday morning while Eduardo measured the sofrito and Lucas climbed the step stool to see what was in the pot. No griddle, no standing over the stove flipping — just batter in a tin, oven on, done. Isabella ate two. Lucas ate four and asked if they were “baby pancakes.” I said yes. Close enough.

Pancake Muffins

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 18 minutes | Total Time: 28 minutes | Servings: 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups whole milk
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (optional, or substitute blueberries)
• Cooking spray or softened butter, for the tin
• Maple syrup, for serving

Instructions

1. Preheat. Heat your oven to 375°F. Grease a standard 12-cup muffin tin generously with cooking spray or softened butter, making sure to coat the rims as well as the cups.
2. Whisk the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt until evenly combined.
3. Combine the wet ingredients. In a separate bowl or large measuring cup, whisk together the eggs, milk, melted butter, and vanilla extract until smooth.
4. Mix the batter. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir gently with a spatula until just combined — a few small lumps are fine. Do not overmix or the muffins will be tough. Fold in the chocolate chips or blueberries if using.
5. Fill the tin. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full.
6. Bake. Bake for 16–18 minutes, until the tops are golden, the edges are set, and a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.
7. Cool and serve. Let the muffins rest in the tin for 5 minutes before running a thin spatula or butter knife around the edges and lifting them out. Serve warm with maple syrup for dipping.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 155 | Protein: 4g | Fat: 6g | Carbs: 22g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 210mg