[Welcome back to ✨ Newer, Better Month ✨ on Smitten Kitchen, when I get update a few SK classics with new knowledge, new techniques, and with real-life time constraints in mind. Previously: Perfect Spaghetti and Meatballs and Extra-Flaky Pie Crust.]

Sometimes “newer, betters” emerge because the original recipe wasn’t as good as it could be. But most of them — like this — come from real life. Like, when you’re really tired on a Saturday morning and you look at a recipe that you swore by at some time in your life when nobody dragged you out of bed at 7am on a Saturday [and then, instead of handing you a cup of coffee for your troubles, as you’d once daydreamed they’d be trained to do by now, demanded pancakes] and say “WHUT.” A blender? No, I am definitely not getting the blender out right now. Wait, why am I turning on the stove and the oven? Do I really need this much butter? Why are there lumps in the batter? Why isn’t this as puffy as I thought it would be? Can I go back to bed yet? I mean, just for a random example that’s definitely not going down in my kitchen as we speak.

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