Pancake Sunday 1.22

Apple Honey

Pancakes

I happened to buy some local honey at the store recently and knew I wanted to use it for pancakes. I got to searching the internet and found this recipe for Apples 'N Honey Pancakes. They looked pretty darn good and we have about 8 lbs of delicious Empire apples sitting on the counter that would be perfect to use. 

Today both girls accompanied me in the kitchen, usually it's only Char, she wants to be a chef when she grows up.

The recipe calls for grated apples in the batter, I couldn't find the grater so I just finely chopped up one apple and then sliced one apple for the top of the pancakes.

The girls were a really great help today, Lex should join us in the kitchen more often (even though she stole and ate two whole apples while making the batter)

Once you pour your batter onto the griddle place a slice of apple on top of each one, then when you flip them wait a few minutes for the apples to caramelize a bit. I found the apples were a bit hard to get my spatula under when they were soft, placing the slices on the griddle first and pouring the batter over them worked better for me.

Mmmm, yummy apple pancakes drizzled in honey. Great way to start the day! 

The recipe made delicious tasting pancakes but they were gummy in texture. There could be a couple reasons for that. Instead of yogurt, I used buttermilk. Instead of grating the apples, I diced them. The honey may have made them gummy as well. Overall, they weren't exactly a "hit" Char ate one with the apple on top but requested I take the apple off all the others, maybe if the apple was peeled first she'd like it better? This is definitely a recipe to keep in mind for tweaking, apples and honey is a tasty combination!

Pancake Sunday 1.15

 More Shape

Pancakes

Nothing really special about today's pancake post. Just some more experimenting with making different shapes, you can find my other shape experimenting post here.

Bacon and Eggs

TWINS!

Dragonfly

Practicing hearts for Valentine's Day

Stars

Backwards cursive, needs more practice!

Letters, perfectly fun and delicious way to spell!

Once I start getting the hang of making shapes with the squeeze bottle, then I'll be able to start planning out pancake breakfast themes!

Pancake Sunday 10.16

Cocoa Pancakes

The best way to start a Sunday morning is with chocolate! I guess chocolate is the best way to start any morning now that I think about it...enough thinking, on to the chocolate!

Sifting the dry ingredients

Quality control

Don't forget the chocolate!

I've made cocoa pancakes before but I guess I didn't post about them (I thought I did) but anywho, I'm posting about them now. Thanks to whole wheat pastry flour these pancakes had a nice nutty taste, good texture and were quite hearty, two did me good until lunch! They weren't too chocolately because there wasn't too much cocoa and the pieces of chocolate were small enough to melt into the pancake nicely. 

Enough jibber-jabbering, here's the recipe!

11/4 cp whole wheat pastry flour

1/4 cp cocoa powder

3tbsp sugar

1tsp baking powder

3/4tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cp buttermilk 

1/4 cp milk

1tsp vanilla

1 egg

2tbsp butter, melted

1/4 cp chocolate chips/chunks

Sift the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl

Mix the wet ingredients in a large bowl

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients

Pour batter onto hot griddle 1/4 cp at a time

ENJOY!

Pancake Sunday 10.9

Dulce de Leche Pancakes

 Dulce de leche is a popular treat in Argentina, it's a milk based caramel-like sauce or spread. It's used to sweeten food and candies and can be smeared on toast, muffins and, of course, pancakes. So since we were talking about Argentina this week we made some dulce de leche pancake spread. There are different ways to make dulce de leche but one easy way is to boil a can of sweetened condensed milk in a pot of water, that takes about 3 hours. I didn't have 3 hours to boil a can so I used a double boiler method, that still took waaaayyy too long.

So I cheated and popped it in the microwave for a few minutes. Guess I should have been more patient because it kept it in the microwave a bit too long and it came out kinda hard. But still tasted yummy!

Have you ever had Brachs Milk Maids? It tasted exactly like those.

It looks like peanut butter

For the pancakes I used a recipe that called for the eggs to be whipped frothy with the sugar, I'm pretty sure I'm asking for an electric hand mixer for Christmas because all this hand whipping is killing my arms! My muscles look great though :p

Frothy eggs

Char mixing all the ingredients

 I think I'll add a new griddle to the list as well, looks like I have hot spots!

So here's the final product! Delicious dulce de leche pancakes. I have to say though, I will not be making the dulce de leche from scratch anymore, it's just too time consuming and much easier to buy it in the store.

Pancake Sunday 9.18

Apple Crumble

Pancakes

Yesterday, we went to a small local apple festival and brought home quite a few apples, so it's no surprise we're having apple pancakes today! I've made apple-raisin pancakes in the past so was trying to steer away from recipes similar to that and thought an apple streusel type pancake would be good. Turns out,  I didn't have the ingredients to make a streusel topping but I did have the ingredients to create a crumb topping, so that's what I did! I found the recipe here and, like usual, I changed it up with the ingredients I had on hand.

Spartan apples

Firm, white flesh that's not too sweet

Apples, butter, sugar, cinnamon, and a touch of water

Charlotte was all over the kitchen today! I barely had to do anything! I cut the apples and flipped the pancakes and she pretty much did everything else, from measuring ingredients to stirring the apples. She is a natural in the kitchen!

The ingredients stirred up before cooking

Letting the apples simmer

After cooking for at least 30 minutes

We added quite a few spices to our batter to make it extra fall-ish tasting, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cloves, yum, I love the taste of fall!

Our crumble topping: butter, flour, sugar

The recipe called for the crumble to be sprinkled on top of the apple compote but I wanted it to melt into the pancakes so I sprinkled it on top before flipping. Like expected, the butter melted and the sugar created a delicious crispy crust. Perfect for soaking the apple compote juices into!

These pancakes were super delicious!

Mmmmmm, the taste of fall!