Dark Chocolate Raspberry Pancakes with Mixed Berry Compote

I am now halfway finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. The book has greatly improved and picked up from the initial 80 pages, but it was very hard to keep focused long enough for me to gain interest in the book.

The book kept me up until well past 3am last night. Today I've accomplished pancakes, organizing my office/guest room, cleaning the deck and carport, and watching Harry Potter year 1 and 2. I would have watched the third one but when I put in the disc, it plays Polar Express!? Needless to say I was not happy. I am also too lazy to go back to Wal-Mart and exchange it today. That will be added to the list of things to accomplish tomorrow evening. 

This morning's breakfast was a quick, throw together type of pancake because its the end of the month and I have not been to the store recently. I was using what few things are still left in the fridge, freezer, and pantry.

Dark Chocolate Raspberry Pancakes With Mixed Berry Compote


Compote
1 C Mixed Berries
3 Tbs Sugar
1/8 C Water
1 Tbs Cornstarch
2 Tbs Water

In a medium sauce pan, over medium heat, combine berries, sugar, and 1/8 C of water.

Bring just to a boil, stirring occasionally. Mix together cornstarch and water, stir into berry mixture. Continue to cook until thickened.

Pancakes
1 C All-Purpose Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
Dash Salt
1 Tbs Sugar
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Egg
2 Tbs Unsalted Butter, melted
3/4 C Milk
1/2 C Red Raspberries
1/4 C Dark Chocolate Chips (I prefer Ghirardelli Chocolate)

Mix together dry ingredients in a medium bowl, whisk in vanilla, egg, melted butter, and milk. Fold in raspberries.

Cook over medium heat in a lightly greased skillet.

Flip when edges are set and cook until both sides are golden.

Top with mixed berry compote and enjoy!

Strawberry Rhubarb Pancakes

A quick trip to the grocery to return a RedBox movie rental and pick up some lettuce for a salad, I came across rhubarb. The first signs that summer is almost here!

The possibilities are almost endless on what to do with it. But I like to be different. Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie. Raspberry Rhubarb Muffins. Dessert Bars. Oatmeal-Rhubarb Squares. The list goes on...

When in doubt, turn to Google. I love Google. Everything you want in a few simple clicks. Well almost everything. Breakfast dishes using this wonderful vegetable are extremely limited.

I found lot of recipes for rhubarb syrups to pour over my beloved breakfast dish. Is it because vegetables in a breakfast pancake just sounds weird? Is that why nobody has done this? I was greatly disappointed at the lack of results Google showed me.

I found Allotment 2 Kitchen's Recipe but didn't want to mess with cooking the rhubarb first. I'm a simple kind of girl. I don't like a lot of steps. Especially first thing in the morning. It's simply not possible to follow a recipe with multiple steps before my coffee has taken effect. I'm a throw it in a bowl and stir type of breakfast person. Save the detailed things for brunch.

Further searching resulted in flavorless a baked pancake with chunks of rhubarb. It didn't impress me.

This brought me to my question, how can there be almost no recipes for a rhubarb pancake? I decided I needed to correct this problem. So here it is....

Strawberry Rhubarb Pancakes
1/2 C Whole Wheat Flour
1/4 C All Purpose Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
Dash Salt
2 Tbs  Sugar
2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
3/4 C Milk
1 Egg
2 Tbs Unsalted Butter, melted
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/2 C Strawberries, diced
1/2 C Rhubarb, finely diced-saves you from cooking it first to make it tender

In a medium bowl, combine flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, and cinnamon. Whisk in milk, egg, butter, and vanilla. Fold in strawberries and rhubarb.

Cook over medium heat in a lightly greased skillet or griddle. When bubbles begin to form one the surface and bottom is golden brown. Turn and cook on second side until golden.

**If your rhubarb is exceptionally tough, use the butter and sugar from the recipe to first saute it until tender. Allow to cool to room temperature and then stir into the batter before adding the strawberries. **

Serves 2. 

Apricot Walnut Pancakes

This morning started off to be a slow day. I woke up at 5am. Who wakes up at 5 on a Saturday?

I think my internal clock operates in a different time zone.

Waking up obnoxiously early, I typically get a lot done. Laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping when nobody is out in the store to annoy me. This morning however, I did none of that. I made pancakes, pulled a blanket out of the closet and curled up on the couch to watch I Love Lucy.

I LOVE I Love Lucy. It is the best t.v. show ever!

That brings me to my cooking adventure this morning. These were inspired by the superb apricots I picked up at the local Harris Teeter store this morning.

Apricot Walnut Pancakes


1 C Whole Wheat Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
Dash Salt
1/2 tsp Ground Ginger
3 Tbs Molasses
1 Egg
1 C Milk
1 Apricot, diced
1/4 C Walnuts, finely chopped

Mix together the dry stuff. Stir in molasses, egg, and milk.

Chop the walnuts until they are of a desirable size.

Chop the apricot into small pieces.

Fold into the pancake batter.

Cook in a lightly greased skillet over low heat until browned on both sides. I had so much fruit and nuts in my batter, there wasn't room for bubbles to appear. Also the molasses makes these pancakes tend to get dark easily, but they aren't burnt.

Enjoy!

The Help & Brown Sugar Oatmeal Pancakes

My morning started almost an hour earlier than I wanted it to. So much for getting rest. I am starting to believe that I am incapable of sleeping.

My mind doesn't stop. It just keeps going and going. Like  the Energizer Bunny. It never stops.

I tossed together a quick pancake batter, cooked up some wonderful pancakes, and ate them while reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

The pancakes were delicious, the book started off rather boring. :-( Nothing all that mind blowing. Definitely a slow starter. 80 pages later, I am finally starting to get into it. Guess we'll have to see how it turns out.

This morning's breakfast: Brown Sugar, Oatmeal Pancakes

3/4 C  Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 C Quick Cooking Oats
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
Dash Salt
1/3 C Dark Brown Sugar
1 Egg
2 Tbs Unsalted Butter, melted
1 C Buttermilk
1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Combine the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. I stir it with a fork to remove the lumps from the brown sugar. Add in the egg, butter, buttermilk, and vanilla. Whisk together well.

Cook over medium heat in a lightly greased skillet.

Turn pancakes when golden brown on the bottom. Mine never formed bubbles on the surface, so watch the  edges carefully for when they set.

Serve and enjoy! (Serves 2-3)

Cornmeal Molasses Pancakes

Hello. I'm Sarah. I have a problem. I'm addicted to pancakes.

I swear, I really do eat other foods. I even take pictures of the stuff I make. It just never seems to make its way onto here.

I guess I should work on that. Maybe this weekend I'll post something non-pancake.

I recently discovered Joy the Baker's Blog. She has tons of great recipes.

Joy was my inspiration for my breakfast this morning.

Cornmeal Molasses Pancakes with Blueberries


I love fruit in my pancakes. Blueberries happens to be what is in the freezer at the moment so they are getting used a lot.

1/2 C Cornmeal
1/2 C Whole Wheat Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
Dash salt
3 Tbs Molasses
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Egg
3 Tbs Unsalted Butter, melted (if you use salted, leave out the salt)
1 C Buttermilk

I'm lazy, I hate doing dishes, so I rarely use more than a bowl, a spoon, a skillet, and a spatula when cooking pancakes. If you've made as many as I have, it is not hard to skip the measuring steps. If not, at least I can tell you how to save on using extra bowls to whisk, sift, and otherwise combine wet and dry ingredients.

Begin with a medium sized mixing bowl, toss in all the dry ingredients. (Cornmeal, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.) Stir these together with a spoon or whisk.

Make a "well" in the center. Otherwords, push all the floury stuff to the sides of the bowl. Crack the egg into this void. Poke at the egg with the spoon or whisk to break the yolk. Stir it around a little bit trying to avoid the flour mixture as much as possible.

Add the molasses, vanilla, and melted butter into this "well" also. Then start whisking the entire mixture together. Add the buttermilk in several parts. This helps to eliminate the lumps in the batter.

Allow the batter to set for a few minutes so that the acidity of the buttermilk can react with the baking soda and baking powder and make the batter fluff up. (I folded in a generous 1/2 C of blueberries before allowing the batter to rest.)

Cook these pancakes in a well-greased, pre-heated skillet over a low-medium heat. The moisture of the molasses causes these pancakes to cook slower and if the heat is too high you'll scorch the bottoms before they are set up enough to turn.

Yogurt Pancakes with Blueberries

I have learned two things this week so far. The first being that pistachios are irresistible. I've eaten a lot. I mean A LOT. The second, that nobody what, I am NOT a photographer. My pictures come out the same rather I take them with my phone, my cheap pink camera, or with my friend's thousand dollar camera that does everything but aim itself. I give up. You'll have to deal with my inability to take pictures. At least my finger isn't in the picture. Thats a plus.


This morning's adventure? Pancakes when there is no milk in the house. I substituted yogurt in place of the milk. I was very doubtful at first. The pancake batter was very thick.



I put two spoonfuls in the skillet. It looked like I just put two spoonfuls of biscuit mix in my skillet. I had to spread the pancake with the spoon. It puffed up nicely though.


Then I went to turn it....that was tricky. The batter melted. The pancake ran off the side of the spatula. My skillet ended up with pancake batter cooked to the sides. What a mess!

But you know what? It tasted delicious! It has that wonderful, melt in your mouth texture that is so comforting when you're forced awake earlier than you'd like by the obnoxious alarm clock that didn't get set correctly.


Then I had to add blueberries to it. What's a comforting pancake without blueberries?

The end result was a not-so-attractive mess where the juice from my frozen blueberries swirled into my batter. It wasn't the prettiest pancake, but oh my did it taste heavenly!

Yogurt Pancakes-With Blueberries
1/2 C All-Purpose Flour
1/4 C Whole Wheat Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
Dash Salt
1 Egg
1 C Vanilla Yogurt (or Plain and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract)
3 Tbs Unsalted Butter, melted
1/2 C Blueberries, thawed if frozen

Put a skillet on to heat over medium low heat. Slow cooking these pancakes helps them to set up.

In a mixing bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. Stir in egg and yogurt. Mix well. Stir in cooled butter. Fold in blueberries.

Cook 1 pancake at a time in your skillet as these spread as they warm up. Make sure your skillet is warm and well greased. Cook pancake until bubbly on top. Mine never set up on the edges, so I had to check the bottom multiple times to make sure it was appropriately browned. Turn carefully and cook until both sides are golden brown.

Serves 2.

Carrot Cake Pancakes

Yesterday was one of those abnormally chilly days. I spent the day with multiple cups of hot tea and a good book, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Something about masturbating dwarfs caught my attention and well, yeah, I sat cuddled up on the couch all day with it. I suggest reading it, I haven't seen the movie yet but I bet they leave out the masturbating dwarf.....

Anywho, this morning's breakfast was one of those recipes I found on some blog site, several years ago and like to make every few months. It's healthy and yummy. Well at least it was healthy until I smothered it in maple syrup.

Carrot Cake Pancakes

(upon a few minutes of searching, I have not been able to remember where I got the recipe, but I'm fairly certain I got it from somebody who got it from Joy The Baker, however I cannot find the recipe on her blog. :/ )

1/2 C All-Purpose Flour

1/2 C Whole Wheat Flour

1 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Ground Cinnamon

1/2 tsp Ground Nutmeg

1 Egg

1 C Buttermilk

1/3 C Raisins

1/2 C Finely Grated Carrot

1/4 C Chopped Pecans

In a medium bowl, mix together dry ingredients. Stir in egg and buttermilk.

Fold in raisins, carrots, and pecans.

**Note: Plump, juicy raisins are a must. If your raisins look and feel like rocks cover them with water, stick them in the microwave for a minute or so until the water heats up and then let them set for 10 minutes or so until they are soft.**

Allow the batter to rest for 10-15 minutes, or over night works well too, fry in a lightly greased skillet or on a griddle.

Serves 2-3 people. I get about 6 pancakes that measure approx. 5 inches.