[Homemade] Japanese pancakes

Hi everybody! Recently I cooked Japanese pancakes for a family breakfast. I spent some time on practicing doing them and I think now I'm capable of doing the regular home ones. However, unfortunately, I still have issues with their stability (a couple of minutes after taking them off from a pan, they start collapsing) and still trying to find a proper technique/recipe.

Some time ago I was so overwhelmed with ones shared across the internet from tourist in Japan (Cafe Stand 10.8), but they used their unique recipe. I was interested in the stability of the cakes they did so tried to replicate. I tried a huge number of combinations/ratios of ingredients (there was even a recipe with a mayo) but I'm still not there :\ I'm pretty sure they use something like mochi/rice flour inside. If any of you know their recipe… I'd really appreciate that 🙂

As for these ones, this time it was this recipe 🙂
0. put a frying pan on the stove and turn on 2/9 heat. You can put a lid on to make it warm as well.
1. 2 eggs (separated yolks and whites)
2. Into a bowl with yolks, add 2ml of any liquid Vanila, 25ml of milk (actually, any fat works here, skinny, full, etc). Mix it.
3. Add 35g of flour (with no soda or baking soda/ferments inside) + 2g baking powder into the bowl with yolks and mix again. The finer the flour, the better here.
4. In the other bowl, with whites, add 2g of lemon juice (or vinegar), a pinch of salt. Start mixing it well with a hand blender. Add sugar/sugar powder 3 times (25g in sum) and mix until it completely dissolves and the creme/merenga is stable.
4.1. Here's a trick. The merenga must be shiny and not liquid at all, otherwise when you start  frying the pancakes might start spreading across the pan
5. When you finish mixing the whites, add 1/3 of them into the bowl with yolk and mix until it's smooth. Afterward add the rest (you can add the mixed yolks here into white as well, there's no huge difference) but this time, mix with a spatula from the bottom.
6. Add some oil to the pan (remove 90% of liquid afterward with a paper) and increase the heat to 4/9 and wait for a bit. Now, it's a tricky thing. Throw a couple of drops of water to it and see how they go. If they start sparkling/boil – we're good to start – decrease the heat to 3/9. Otherwise, wait a bit more.
7. With a table spoon (yeah, you can use a piping bag for cream like I did earlier but I'm so tired of washing it every time….a spoon works fine here) add several hills of batter into the pan. Try not to spread them a lot. 1 spoon – 1 hill. Then 1-2 more rounds. add each one on the top of the existing ones. As they will go bigger, there must be some place between them)
8. Take a tea spoon and add 0.5-1 spoonful of water between the pancakes (depends on the pan size). You must be sure, the water doesn't flow under the pancakes, otherwise it will ruin them. Close the lid.
9. The magic starts here. Time to time check the water drops you left. they must boil! If they aren't – it's not enough heat -> increase from 3 to 3.5-4. When they start to boil, decrease to 3 back. Unfortunately, there's no silver bullet. It completely depends on your stove/pan. I had to balance and jump between 3-4 all the time. On youtube, for somebody, even perpetual 2/9 works fine… looks like I'm not lucky enough 🙂
10. After the water is completely off, add 2-3 spoonfuls of batter more at the top (until it's finished). Add the water again and watch.
11. When the water goes off, open the lid, flip them. Be careful here! they must not touch the water left and due to them being too soft, you have to be very soft with them as well 🙂
12. Add water… and wait until it goes off.
13. They are ready. Add salted butter, Maple syrup, and sugar powder.
14. You managed to do it ! 🙂