Archive for: pancakes
Easter is a holiday that I like to celebrate by having brunch with family and friends, but sometimes it’s nice to celebrate on a smaller scale. One way to do this is to whip up a batch of Easter Egg Pancakes, rather than big batches of baked goods meant to serve a crowd. These are your basic buttermilk pancakes that are dressed up for Easter with a little bit of food coloring intended to give them a “decorated Easter egg” look.
To make these, you simply add food coloring to a small amount of your standard pancake batter. The colored batter is piped onto the top of regular pancake batter after it is added to a hot griddle. By putting the colored batter into small ziploc bags with one of the corners cut off (or piping bags), you can get more detailed with your decorations and you have a little bit of time to work before the pancake batter sets. I kept my basic batter plain, so that the colors would stand out more, but you could even tint the basic batter for a brighter (and even more appealing to kids) look. Use leftover colored batter to pipe a few extra decorations – a strip of grass, small “eggs” or even little bunny shapes – and garnish the plate before serving.
If you cook your pancakes at a lower-than-normal temperature for a longer time, you can can cook them all the way through and preserve even more of the brightly colored batter. Personally, I still want my pancakes to be nicely browned and don’t mind sacrificing a bit of color in my finished product as a result. That said, be sure to make your colored batters nice and bright (gel food colors will give you a darker result) so that as much color as possible comes through. Even if your pancakes don’t look as good as your dyed Easter eggs, don’t worry because they will taste delicious and will still be festive no matter what!
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Fruit often winds up on top of a stack of pancakes, rather than inside the pancakes themselves, both in the form of whole pieces of fruit and incorporated into a syrup or topping. This is usually because classic buttermilk pancakes are pretty darn good on their own and it’s easy to simply make plain pancakes and put the fruit on top. This is a great option, of course, but it’s nice to mix things up by putting the fruit inside of your pancakes from time to time for a little more flavor. These Apple Cinnamon Buttermilk Pancakes are a great example because they have chunks of sauteed apple inside of every pancake, adding more flavor and texture to every bite of breakfast.
I start off this recipe by dicing up some apples and sauteeing them in a little bit of butter and sugar until they are tender. Just about any kind of apple will work, so use what you have on hand. The pancakes themselves are not sweet (except for the syrup!) so I would recommend sweeter apples as opposed to tart Granny Smith types. Next, a cinnamon and buttermilk pancake batter is prepared and dolloped onto a hot griddle. I add the apple pieces into each pancake as it’s cooking, placing the pieces on the top of each pancake before it has “set.” The apples stay in place when the pancakes are flipped and pick up a little extra caramelization from the hot pan.
The finished pancakes are fluffy and light, with a nice cinnamon flavor and plenty of pieces of apple. The apples are tender, but not mushy, so they add a little texture to the pancakes and while guaranteeing that your breakfast is going to have a good apple flavor. Maple syrup is a fantastic compliment to the apples and cinnamon in the pancakes, so definitely splurge on the real thing when serving these.
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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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