Best Ever Vegan Pancakes

Trust me when I say, these vegan pancakes are the best pancakes I’ve ever tasted. We tested this recipe 30 times and with countless variations so they would be perfect.

The precise blend of baking powder, vegan sour cream, and soy milk, transforms into a thick yet airy batter bursting with buttery flavor. When cooked, the pancakes become perfectly crispy and golden brown, and yes, they even have that classic golden ring around the edges. But the interior remains pillowy and soft, with an incomparable fluffiness.

If you’ve ever felt underwhelmed by flat, soggy, flavorless vegan pancakes, this is the recipe you’ve been waiting for. Classic American diner-style pancakes, but made vegan

Why this recipe works
Not your average pancake.
These pancakes involve a tad more work than your average vegan pancake recipe. They are, however, anything but average.

A mix of vegan butter, vegan “buttermilk,” sour cream, and vanilla fills them with rich, buttery flavors. The flavor is so good that I sometimes just eat them plain with my hands like the animal I secretly am.

Fluffy. Crispy. Buttery.
You get the best of all worlds here: a pancake with a fluffy interior, a crispy exterior, and incredible buttery flavor.

Baking powder, lemon juice, and protein-rich soy milk work together to create serious air bubbles in the thick batter. And a bit of sugar aids in caramelization.

Once a scoop hits the hot oiled pan, the pancakes rise, fluff up, and crisp around the edges.

They’re filling, too.
It’s likely you’ll be quite full after only one or two pancakes. They’re the fluffiest pancakes ever and, with the addition of vegan sour cream and soy milk, very filling. I’m happy with just one pancake but even Max never eats more than two.
Tested meticulously.
We take pride in being thorough at RPL, and we tested this recipe at least 30 times (no exaggeration).

We tried 4 different sour creams, 3 different yogurts as substitutes, tested without sour cream, tried whole wheat flour, used a nonstick pan and a stovetop griddle, and more variations than I can count.

Ingredient notes

Soy milk + lemon juice. When mixed with an acid like lemon juice or vinegar, soy milk curdles a lot due to its high protein content, yielding a super yeasty pancake batter that fluffs up fantastically when it hits the hot pan.

And the acidity in the lemon juice helps break down the gluten strands in flour, lending a more tender crumb.

Substitute: If you can tolerate soy, please use soy milk. If you have a soy allergy, creamy, full-fat oat milk is a pretty good alternative (we like Oatly and Califia Farms extra creamy oat milk).

Vegan sour cream. The idea to add sour cream to the batter came after flipping through J. Kenji Alt López’s seminal book The Food Lab. The vegan sour cream plays a few roles:

Adds rich flavor and a very subtle tang, very much needed in a standard vegan pancake.
Yields pancakes that are tender and moist on the inside and crisp and golden on the outside.
The fat coats the flour, limiting gluten development and lending a tender crumb.