It’s okay to accept a little help now and then. Especially when, on a day when everyone still needs to be up and at ‘em, help means that you and your squad get to tuck into a plate of fluffy pancakes or waffles made with flour grown and milled in the Catskills. No sweat – nothing more than an egg, some milk and a few minutes at the stove or waffle iron is required. Boom.

Leave it to Claire Marin, a woman who tends more than 300 beehives and 2,000 maple trees, to create a pancake mix that’s a blank (but no less delicious) canvas for nature’s sweetest anointments. Only salt and baking soda join the stone-ground flour, so you can really taste the wheat – even when slathered with butter and syrup, or covered with blueberries and whipped cream.

These flapjacks and waffles raise to such impressive heights, in fact, that they’re blue ribbon-worthy. And you’ll win major props. Better figure in a little extra time to take a bow. 

TIP OF THE TONGUE

After ladling onto a hot griddle, try setting a few strips of already cooked bacon into the still wet batter, then flip. Who’s a master chef now?