Pancake Sunday 2.19

Berries 'N' Cream

Pancakes

Once again, I'm using ingredients I have on hand to create a super yummy pancake. Today, berries 'n' cream. 

I started off with frozen mixed berries and a little bit of water and set it on the stove to simmer down. It broke down the berries into a yummy syrupy sauce. I didn't add any sugar to this, only berries and water.

While the berries were simmering I started on my batter. I used the fluffy buttermilk pancake recipe but did a few things differently. I added some of the liquid from the berries on the stove and I also separated the eggs and beat the whites, fold them in last to lighten up the batter.

The berry liquid gave the pancakes a nice purplish swirl. The pancakes were nice and light because of the egg whites, which was great. Especially since I was pairing these pancakes with heavy cream.

I beat heavy cream with a touch of powdered sugar to help cut down on the tartness of the berries, I also added the zest of one small lemon and a tiny bit of lemon extract. I meant to only thicken the cream but ended up over-beating it, I almost made butter! EEK! Luckily I caught it in time and all was well! These were super yummy!

Pancake Sunday 2.12

 Chocolate Raspberry

Heart Pancakes

With Valentine's Day on the way I wanted to create special pancakes for my girls. So I whipped together a chocolate batter. I couldn't find one that used ingredients I have so I made up my own using wheat pastry flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, eggs and buttermilk.

I warmed some raspberry preserves on the stove, originally I wanted to use frozen raspberries but decided to just use the preserves because they taste good and I knew they'd warm nicely to make a yummy topping for the pancakes.

 I added about 1/4 cup of preserves to the pancake batter to add just a hint of raspberry to the chocolate.

The pancakes were huge, I could only cook two at a time on the griddle. I needed to make them big enough to cut out hearts with the cookie cutter.

Once they were done and the hearts were cut out, I topped them with a sprinkle of powdered sugar and drizzled them with the warmed raspberry preserves. The pancakes were delicious! You can't go wrong with the combination of raspberry and chocolate, especially for Valentine's Day!

Pancake Sunday 2.5

Nutella Pancakes

with

Caramelized Bananas

Lately I've been trying to find recipes for pancakes using items I already have in the pantry. Luckily, this week I had the perfect combination of Nutella and bananas, I just needed to find the perfect recipe. I was a little skeptical about being able to find a good Nutella pancake recipe, the last one I made left me disappointed. After searching the internet for awhile, I found this one and it sounded super promising! Not to mention simple to make since there are not very many ingredients.

1/2 cup of Nutella is all you need!

Whisk eggs and Nutella together

They blend together perfectly

After adding oil and milk

Add liquid to dry ingredients

Stacks of pancakes, my favorite Sunday view!

Browning butter and sugar

Add bananas

These pancakes were a WIN! The Nutella pancake by itself, without the bananas was nice. Not too sweet because there isn't any added sugar and nice and fluffy. There was a really nice Nutella flavor. Adding the bananas on top was amazing! I did change the recipe a bit. The recipe called for 1 cup of sugar and I only added 1/2 cup and the recipe called for 1/4 cup of syrup and I didn't add any syrup. A little water would have been nice to break up the caramelized sugar a bit and make it more saucy instead of a thick compote but it did the job anyway.  They were really delicious and the girls and I had seconds! I definitely recommend giving these pancakes a try!!

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 1. 8

Shape 

Pancakes

For Christmas I received a kit for making pancakes in different shapes. It came with an idea book and also a squeeze bottle to be able to draw lines and designs and fun shapes and neat-o stuff I've never tried before. So, I busted it out this Sunday and gave it a (very weak) try.

Basic Pancake Batter

The first shape Char asked for was a tiger...er, sure!

Butterflies for breakfast, anyone?

Stars were the most fun to draw and the easiest

Pancake letters, yummy way to learn how to spell!

Mustaches are fun to eat and wear!

By the end of the batter I was getting pretty good at the shapes. I'm pretty excited to go through some of the ideas in the book and see what else I can come up with!