Archive for: pancakes
A big stack of homemade buttermilk pancakes is a wonderful way to start a weekend morning, especially when they’re topped off with a generous amount of maple syrup. You may have noticed, however, that syrup tends to get absorbed into fluffy pancakes in a matter of minutes. This means that you need to reapply the syrup as you eat, or simply pour it as you go on small portions of the pancake. Some get around this problem by keeping their syrup in a small bowl and dipping their pancakes. Still others may decide to use Pancake Plates. Designed by John Wyle, these plates have one slightly raised edge that creates a slight slope and allows syrup to run away from your pancakes and into a built-in pool on the edge of the plate. Pancake lover-Wyle felt that this design would prevent soggy pancakes by giving users a dipping pool of syrup that would form after pouring syrup onto a fresh stack of pancakes. You could use it for other foods as well, but this plate is really going to shine with pancakes, waffles and french toast.
As a side note, these plates are also great for food bloggers because having one raised edge can allow you to get extra light on the top of your plate – whether you’re eating pancakes or not – and you will be able to take some great food photos with this as a prop!
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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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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Pancake Day is one of the few food holidays that has its roots firmly planted in tradition and was not simply named on a whim to celebrate the tasty breakfast food. Pancake Day is better known as Fat Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday is the day before Lent, the period of fasting and prayer that preceeds Easter in many Christian traditions. The tradition of eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday began as a way to use up ingredients including butter, milk and eggs that were not supposed to be eaten and would go bad during the period of Lent. Pancakes, particularly thin and buttery crepes, were a great way to use up these ingredients in one easy and indulgent dish. The tradition of eating pancakes is accessible to many regardless of religion, and the idea of a Pancake Day gets a little more popular every year.
These days many people opt to celebrate Pancake Day by eating pancakes for breakfast, lunch or dinner and the celebrations are decidedly non-religious for most. For instance, in the towns of Liberal, Kansas and Olney, England hold a pancake-flipping race, where women run down the streets of each town flipping pancakes, in a tradition that actually dates back hundreds of years. I personally just use Pancake Day as an excuse to eat pancakes for dinner and to try out a few new recipes, like the Passion Fruit Coconut Pancakes pictured above or a batch of Bacon Pancakes! Savory crepes are even a nice way to celebrate Pancake Day. You can eat pancakes any day of the year, of course, but having a holiday spring up around them just makes things seem a little more festive!
