Yesterday morning I had this crazy idea to invite a whole passel of people over for pancakes following the half day of work today. Because of family obligations and the crazy amount of snow, only one family joined us, but we still had a fantastic visit.
I'd promised homemade pancakes, but I'd only ever made pancakes with a store-bought mix, so I searched online for the best recipe. I even stopped by IHOP's website for inspiration, where I saw their splash page feature for coffee cake pancakes. I started drooling.
With a few changes to a few different recipes, I came up with my own version of coffee cake pancakes. Here it is, a double-batch recipe...
COFFEE CAKE PANCAKES
Streusel topping:
1.25 cups flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup soft margarine
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. After mixing the dry ingredients, I used a handmixer to blend in the margarine until the mixture was the consistency of wet sand. Toss the mixture by the handful onto a parchment covered cookie sheet. Bake for 25-30 minute or until golden brown.
I overcooked the topping, so I ended up grinding up the hard chunks in my food processor. I was left with something that looked like graham cracker crust. Right before I started cooking the pancakes, I mixed in some melted butter to make it clumpy.
Pancake batter:
3 cups all-purpose flour
6 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/8 cup white sugar
2.5 cups whole milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
6 tbs melted butter
Mix together the dry ingredients. Allow the eggs to warm to room temperature. Heat the milk to lukewarm. Combine the eggs, milk, vanilla and melted butter and whisk well. Pour wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Stir slowly with a spoon until blended, but still lumpy. Let sit for 10 minutes.
I used an ice cream scoop to make medium-sized pancakes on a 350-degree griddle. Once the pancakes were poured out, I sprinkled 1-2 tablespoons of the streusel topping onto each cake, followed by finely chopped walnuts and almonds (optional). Flip the cakes once the bubbles reach to the center and the spatula slides under easily.
I served them with a choice of real or imitation maple syrup, homemade hot apple cider and orange juice. Delicious.
I can imagine them with a cinnamon frosting drizzled on top or even whipped cream, but I thought they were quite tasty "plain."
HOT APPLE CIDER
I filled a saucepan three-quarters full with unsweetened 100% apple cider juice. I added 2 tablepoons of cinnamon, 1 tsp of nutmeg, 1 tsp of allspice, and 1/8 cup of real maple syrup. I let that simmer for an hour and strained it through a cotton cloth. Delightful.
Merry Christmas Everybody!
Much love from the Mathis Family.
