Fun Pancakes

Tired of boring pancakes? Well, I have some awesome ideas to fix that! When I was little, my dad loved to make weird pancakes combined with weird syrups. Most of my siblings didn't develop a taste for his funky combinations, but I really enjoyed them. Then, the first year of my marriage, we were so poor that all we could afford to eat was regular pancakes and cheap syrup or meatless spaghetti and that lasted for about a year. After our pancake year, I wasn't able to eat pancakes at all for another year or two. So, I vowed we would never have boring pancakes if we were even going to bother making them. Now, without further ado, here are my fancy pancake ideas!


Pancake Mix-ins:

• strawberries (or any other fruit you like) and cream cheese
• orange juice (or any other kind, sub in for the water)
• nutty (any kind of nuts you want, all chopped up)
• minty chips (or chocolate, white chocolate, butterscotch, whatever)
• apple pie filling (as in a can of pie filling fruit)
• apple butter (again, sub in for a good portion of the water)
• any combination of these that sounds good to you!

Topping Ideas:

• lemon curd and raspberry syrup (ya know, like raspberry lemonade)
• peanut butter and jam (if you haven't tried this, you must live in a hole)
• frozen berries and whipped cream (I prefer the spray kind and blueberries)
• apple butter (on top or in the batter, apple butter rocks)
• any other kind of butter (ie honey butter, pumpkin butter, kiwi butter, etc)
• nuttella (seriously, how could this not be your go to pancake topping?)
• peanut butter, bananas and maple syrup
• store bought fruity syrups (a staple)
• fun homemade syrups (my daddy's recipe for simple syrup will follow)
• sweet-and-spicy jams (ie jalapeno/mango and all the other fancy ones)
• cream cheese bagel spread (if it's good on those, how can it not be on these?)

Daddy's Fun Syrup

• 1 cup water
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2-1 tsp flavoring (mint, coconut, maple, vanilla, banana, raspberry, whatever)

*Don't be afraid. You'd be surprised what flavors make really good syrups.


Directions:

• Mix all ingredients in small saucepan and heat over med-high heat, stirring constantly, until it's hot or to desired thickness (keep in mind that you are not trying to make candy or honey, so don't be expecting it to get really thick. plus, this kind of syrup is better hot and runny)

BIG tip: mix some food coloring into the pancakes and/or the syrup--most things are more fun when they're a fun color...I even dye my milk. So, you can have pink strawberry pancakes with blue coconut syrup and you'll love it! And if you're a health food nut, this is a good way to get kids/husbands to eat whole wheat pancakes.