My swami loves pancakes.

But finding the cloudlike hot cakes that he remembers from his childhood has been a bit of an obsession for this gentle man who holds a master’s degree in Asian medicine. He isn’t a swami, per se. I call him that with respect and affection.

He’s a board-certified acupuncturist, a fellow that seems to have found the secret to contentment. His life seems in perfect balance, divided between healing, family life, meditation and surfing.

Only the search for the lighter-than-air pancakes, like the ones his mother made (but has forgotten how to make), unsettles him. He works up a big appetite with his early-morning surf sessions. And for years he and his surfing buddy Greg have sampled post-surf pancakes from a wide variety of eateries, only to be disappointed.

As his patient, I’ve heard about it, sometimes between the insertions of carefully placed needles in my tender flesh.

Needle one. He advises that pancakes should include drifts of beaten egg whites to make them lighter than air. They should be light enough to almost melt in the mouth.

Needle two. He says eateries use the same old add-water-mixes that produce heavy and tasteless pancakes. They don’t meet his standards.

Needle three. He talks about the splendor of real maple syrup. No, not the restaurant kind that he says can taste like water, sugar and caramel. He says that he has made peace with bogus syrup by providing his own “real” syrup when he eats out.

Needle four. He suggests that restaurant pancakes often taste like bacon because the same griddle is used for cooking pancakes and pork products, something that doesn’t amuse his mostly vegetarian palate.

More needles. More alleged pancake felonies.

I leave the office feeling absolutely great. I am pain-free and filled with blissful thoughts, but nagged with a growing hunger for pancakes.

So you can imagine how delighted I was to discover a recipe for Cloudcakes in Cook’s Country magazine. The instructions included egg whites that are beaten into soft peaks. And to ensure a desirable texture, the recipe calls for more egg whites than egg yolks. The writer, Sean Lawler, promises ethereal pancakes. He even warns against deflating the batter, telling readers to carefully fold in the egg whites, leaving a few white streaks in place.

I invited swami and his pal to breakfast at my house to put those cakes to the test.

Before they arrived, I mixed dry ingredients in one bowl, and the buttermilk, sour cream, melted butter and egg yolks in another. The egg whites were in the large bowl of my electric mixer, ready to be beaten at the last minute. In the process, my mind drifted back to my mother’s flapjacks, a morning treat of an entirely different sort.

My mother thought breakfast should be loaded with protein, so she whirled batter ingredients with cottage cheese in a blender. Her pancakes were fairly thin but heavy. They were folded in half to cradle a scoop of cottage cheese and a spoonful of homemade jelly. I thought they were delicious, but they weren’t even close to being fluffy.

After surfing, hair still wet and stubborn sand between their toes, the two pancake lovers sat at my kitchen counter. Beating the egg whites to soft peaks while heating vegetable oil in my large nonstick skillet, I noticed the childlike expression of excitement on swami’s face. I hoped these pancakes would match his memories.

Soon, small scoops of puffy dough rose in the skillet forming surprisingly tall pancakes. About 3/4-inches high, they cooked slowly on medium-low heat and became an enticing golden brown.

Two batches were consumed almost instantly and words of praise were pouring out like warm maple syrup from a wide-open spigot.

So, feeling confident, I added fresh blueberries to the next batch. Swami said he thought they were good with blueberries, but added that the berries interfered with the fluffiness.

As they headed for the door, they assured me that their pancake search had ended. They asked for the recipe as they put on their shoes.

I hope they were telling the truth. Could these indeed be pancake perfection? The swami wouldn’t lie, right?