Archive for the ‘Breakfasts’ Category
Pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake and pumpkin bread and just some of the many tasty baked goods that you can make using pumpkin to infuse a little fall flavor into your kitchen. Another favorite of mine are pumpkin pancakes. I can’t think of a better way to start off a cool, fall morning than with a big stack of sweet and spicy pumpkin pancakes topped with a little butter and doused in maple syrup.
These are Thick and Fluffy Pumpkin Pancakes, the kind that make a dramatic tower on a breakfast table and soak up just the right amount of maple syrup. The pancake batter is made with pumpkin puree and it uses just 1/2 cup, which means that after baking that batch of pumpkin muffins you’ll have just the right amount leftover for pumpkin pancakes. The batter is sweetened with maple syrup and gets a hint of butteriness from buttermilk. I used my own homemade pumpkin pie spice blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves to season these, but you can add those spices in any combination you like or use a store bought pumpkin pie spice mix.
They may be thick, but these pancakes are light and tender, not dense or heavy feeling. They do take a minute or so longer than some other pancake recipes do to cook, so after heating up my griddle and making the first batch, I will often turn down the heat to medium to ensure that the pancakes don’t get too dark as they cook.
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When I’m working with a shaped pan, like the Wilton Doughnut Twist Pan, I will often start out working with the recipe that comes on the packaging. These recipes are usually tasty and are always formulated to fit the pan, so there is no guesswork involved in trying out the recipe. The recipes are also a good jumping off point for making changes to a recipe easily because it gives you a basic formula that you know will work with the pan without making too much (or too little batter). This is exactly what I did with the Donut Twist Pan: I took the recipe on the back of the box, tried it and tried my own twist on it.
The recipe for baked crullers is simple, muffin-type recipe that is enriched with buttermilk to ensure that the crullers have a tender crumb and a moist interior. The original recipe has a few hints of spice added to it, but after playing around with it a little bit, I decided to make mine all vanilla. I omitted all of the spices, added additional vanilla extract and used homemade vanilla sugar to finish off my donuts. You can glaze the crullers with a glaze made with confectioners sugar and milk (or water), but since I like real donuts that are rolled in sugar, I rolled my baked crullers in sugar, too. This gives the crullers a crisp, sweet outer layer that is surprisingly similar to that of a fried donut.
This recipe is designed to work with Wilton’s Doughnut Twist Pan. If you don’t have one, you could use another type of baked donut pan or even a muffin pan, filling each cavity up about 2/3 full with batter. Brush your baked goods with a little butter, roll them in sugar and you’ll definitely be happy with the results of the baked donuts.
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As much as I enjoy pancakes, I have to admit that it is difficult to beat out a stack of freshly made waffles for breakfast. Pancakes always seem so simple and homey, so easy to throw together. Waffles actually don’t take much more time to put together than pancakes, but somehow they seem fancier and more time-intensive. For this reason, I tend to be much more likely to throw together a batch of pancakes for breakfast than a batch of waffles early in the morning. It also makes me appreciate this overnight waffle recipe even more, because it takes all of the effort out of making waffles for breakfast.
These Overnight Buttermilk Waffles are yeast waffles where the batter is prepared the night before you plan to make the waffles. The batter is left to ferment in the refrigerator for 8-12 hours before cooking, which allows the batter plenty of time to rise. In the morning, a small amount of baking soda is stirred into the batter before cooking, which reacts with the dough and aerates it even more. The result is a fluffy waffle that is crisp on the outside with a moist and tender interior that takes only minutes to cook.
The waffle batter is made with butter and buttermilk, and they have a rich, buttery flavor to them. If you have a Belgian waffle maker, you are going to have a slightly lighter waffle than a flatter waffle iron will produce with this recipe, but you can definitely make these with any type of waffle iron.There is only a tiny amount of sugar in the batter, so they’re perfect for serving with maple syrup or with whipped cream and fresh berries.
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I start my mornings, like so many people, with a cup of coffee. I love coffee in most forms and I’ll take a latte, an espresso or a regular cup of drip. I’ll also trade in that cup o’ joe for a plate of Cappuccino Pancakes. This is a simple pancake recipe that is spiked with just enough coffee to give it a good coffee flavor, while still allowing you to get a hint of the milk and buttermilk that normally lend their flavor to a batch of pancakes. It may not have steamed milk on top of it, like a real cappuccino, but it still seems to capture that cappuccino flavor in pancake form.
Milk and buttermilk really give these pancakes their body and nice, fluffy texture. Adding regular coffee tends to water down a batter and leave you with thinner and generally less satisfying pancakes. So, to get the coffee flavor into this recipe, I used instant espresso powder. Instant espresso powder has a wonderfully concentrated flavor and is easy to incorporate into a recipe. Something like Starbucks Via will also incorporate very well. Instant coffee powder will work, but the flavor isn’t quite as strong as with the other options, so use a little extra.
The pancakes are very slightly sweetened with maple syrup and have a good balance of coffee and buttermilk flavors. You can top them with butter and syrup or deck them out with whipped cream and a drizzle of chocolate sauce. Clearly, I went the chocolate sauce route and would highly recommend it if you don’t mind something sweet for breakfast. I’ll advocate topping your regular cup of coffee off with whipped cream and chocolate sauce, too.
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A pat of butter and a generous drizzle of maple syrup is probably my favorite way to finish off a plate full of hot-off-the-griddle pancakes, but it isn’t the only option out there. Fresh fruit is another great way to top off pancakes, but as tasty as fresh fruit is, you don’t get the consistency with a handful of sliced berries and I like to have some sauce for my pancakes to soak up as I eat them.
This Strawberry Guava Syrup is a quick syrup I made in the microwave using fresh strawberries and some guava jelly (jelly or preserves available in most markets). It is one of those things that I realized I should share even though it isn’t particularly “fancy” because it is so good I’ve whipped some up at least a half dozen times since berry season started! The syrup has a lovely fresh and tropical flavor to it and, while it isn’t particularly thick, you end up with big chunks of strawberries in the finished syrup that add a nice look and texture to plates full of pancakes and waffles.
I use fresh strawberries for this recipe, but frozen berries will also work. The frozen berries will break down much more quickly than fresh strawberries will, so with frozen berries you might want to cook the syrup a little bit longer to break them down even further, creating a thicker syrup with fewer large chunks of berries. Frozen strawberries might also require a little extra sweetener that fresh berries at the height of the season will not need, so stir in an extra tablespoonful of sugar or so as necessary.
You can serve this syrup on anything, but since I’ve showcased it on top of a pile of fluffy buttermilk pancakes, I’m including the recipe for those as well as the syrup. The syrup is best the day it is made because that is when you can really taste the strawberry and guava separately. As you store it, the flavors will meld together a bit. Fortunately, the syrup takes less than a minute to make (and less than 5 minutes if you have to chop up the berries) so making it just before serving is even easier than making the pancakes to go with it.
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