Archive for: pancakes
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.
+Continue Reading
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!
There are many things that you can do with a basic pancake recipe to make it a little bit more exciting. You can vary the syrup, using everything from maple syrup to agave to a thickened berry sauce. You can add fruit to the batter, or chocolate chips or even bacon. The options are almost endless, and one of my favorite things to add in is ricotta cheese.
Ricotta cheese adds both lightness and richness to the pancakes, giving them a more tender texture and a slightly richer flavor than plain pancake batter. You can use any variety of ricotta cheese. Low fat and full fat tend to give the best results, but even a fat free ricotta will work well. But ricotta isn’t the only secret to these pancakes. The eggs are separated before going into the batter and the whites are beaten to soft peaks. This adds a lot of air and keeps the pancakes soft and fluffy.
These pancakes are a great way to start the morning and are a nice change of pace from the usual buttermilk pancakes. The best way to serve them is with a little bit of browned butter and a splash (or three) of maple syrup. Fresh fruit also makes a nice finishing touch.
+Continue Reading
You don’t need an excuse to enjoy pancakes, but, like most things, they’re even better when they’re free. On Tuesday, March 1st, IHOP is hosting their annual National Pancake Day Celebration, where the popular chain gives out a free short stack of their classic buttermilk pancakes (3 pancakes) to every customer who comes in between 7am and 10pm. The chain does this as a fundraiser for the Childen’s Miracle Network Hospitals, a charity that raises money for children’s hospitals all across the US, and asks guests to think about leaving a donation (small or large) to the charity while they’re enjoying their pancakes. IHOP has been running this promotion since 2006 and has raised more than $5.35 million dollars for charity, and hopes to add at least another $2 million to that total this year.
This year, National Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday) is actually on March 8th, but IHOP is starting the celebration a little early to draw extra attention to their program. If you can’t make it out to get your free pancakes, you can still either give to the Childen’s Miracle Network Hospitals through IHOP or to them (or another charity, of course) on your own, but when they’re hot off the griddle, IHOP has some excellent buttermilk pancakes and you can’t beat the combination of eating pancakes and supporting a good cause any day of the year.
Vampire bats, jack o’ lanterns and haunted houses. These are just a few of the icons that you see pop up every Halloween, and they make up the set of Halloween Pancake Molds from Williams Sonoma. The cooking store usually releases a new set every year, with different designs, but these have a nice mix of shapes to them and it’s fun to see something on a pancake besides just another circle. The molds are nonstick and come with a handle that makes them easy to remove from the griddle. It’s close to Halloween, so you should be able to find these on sale, and you can either keep using them (the haunted mansion could easily become a gingerbread house with gingerbread pancakes!) through the holidays, or simply get a few good breakfasts out of them and save them for next year.
If you don’t want to run out and by the molds, you can achieve a similar effect by using cookie cutters that you might already have at home. The molds are nonstick, so give your cookie cutters a light greasing with vegetable oil or cooking spray, then set them on your frying pan/griddle and fill with batter. It might be a touch harder to get the pancakes out of the molds, so make sure to let the pancakes set up before removing them so the design says pretty clear. Worst case scenario, simply use the cookies cutters to cut Halloween shapes out of regular pancakes!
