I tend to be the mother who tries to make things healthy.

I sneak things in. I swap things out. I reduce the sugar. I add the fruit. I look at a perfectly respectable recipe and wonder whether it really needs all that butter.

My children have lived with this long enough to know the drill.

But then your kid hurts his hand and needs stitches.

And the next morning, when he wants pancakes, you make the pancakes.

The real ones.

The fluffy ones.

The ones with butter and sugar and maple syrup running down the sides.

There is a time for nutritional optimization, and there is a time for spoiling your child a little because yesterday somebody stitched his hand back together.

This was the latter.

The only problem was that I didn’t have buttermilk.

I did, however, have whole milk and a lemon, which turns out to be all you really need to approximate what buttermilk is doing in a pancake recipe. Add a little acid to the milk, leave it alone for several minutes, and you have something that looks slightly questionable and works beautifully.

So that’s what I did.

Whole milk. Lemon juice. Five or ten minutes on the counter.

Then came the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Two eggs. Melted butter. Vanilla.

This is also where I have to fight every instinct I possess as a person who likes things properly mixed.

Pancake batter does not want to be properly mixed.

It wants you to stop.

A few lumps are good. Stirring until the batter is perfectly smooth develops more gluten and can leave you with pancakes that are flatter and tougher than the soft, fluffy stack you had in mind.

So I mixed until everything had just come together, put down the spoon, and let the batter sit.

That little rest helps too. Give it five or ten minutes before you start cooking and the batter thickens slightly while the leavening gets to work.

Then comes the pan.

A little butter. Medium to medium-low heat. About a third of a cup of batter for each pancake.

And patience.

Wait until bubbles begin appearing across the surface and the edges start to look set. Then flip.

Once.

And please resist the deeply satisfying urge to take your spatula and smash the pancake down against the pan.

We worked hard for that fluff.

Leave it alone.

There is a time for nutritional optimization, and there is a time for spoiling your child a little.

The second side only needs another minute or two, and then you have exactly the kind of pancake I had been hoping for: golden outside, thick and soft inside, with enough height that stacking three of them feels slightly excessive.

Which, obviously, is the point.

I added butter and maple syrup and tasted one while I was making them, because somebody has to maintain standards around here.

They were really good.

And yes, there are mornings when I’ll make the healthier breakfast. There will be fruit and eggs and whole grains and all the other things I generally want my kids eating.

There are also mornings when one of them is sitting at the kitchen counter with stitches in his hand.

Those mornings get pancakes.