smpx 39: pineapple

This week we searched the kitchen cabinets for something to make for SMPX and found a can of pineapple chunks. I drained the juice and patted the pineapple pieces with paper towels to get off as much of the excess juice as I could before adding them to the batter.

***
The result was good! We give pineapple pancakes 3/5 stars.

smpx 37: dried fig

After a massive grocery shopping event on Saturday, we had several options for SMPX this week. We decided on fig pancakes. I don't think I've ever bought figs before, I know I haven't ever cooked with them. And really, I probably haven't eaten them outside of Fig Newtons and a couple fresh ones I picked off a tree at the beach last summer.

So I chopped up some dried figs and mixed them into the batter, and saved a couple for garnish on the top. These came out really well. The figs were sweet and chewy and were especially tasty with butter and maple syrup.

*** 1/2

We give dried fig pancakes 3.5/5 stars.

smpx 33: mango

I chopped up dried mango and added it to the batter mix. Must have been dealing with a crazy sweet tooth, because I also added brown sugar and honey. The finished pancakes were topped with a little more of the secret ingredient.

Surprisingly, I didn't kill us with sugar overload. These were chewy and fruity and pretty darn good.

****
We give mango pancakes 4/5 stars. Next week: something exciting in celebration of National Pancake Day.

smpx 32: caramel apple

Cameo apples are the best. We'd already made apple pancakes, but as an excuse to use them again we made caramel apple pancakes this Sunday.

We cut up an apple, added some of the caramel syrup to the whole wheat batter, and cooked them up. Instead of syrup we used a little bit more of the caramel. They were okay; a little dry. Some applesauce would have been good to add to the batter.

** 1/2

We give caramel apple pancakes 2.5/5 stars. Next week: sweet potato pancakes?

smpx 27: whole grain white chocolate cherry

We mixed up some pancakes from scratch in Maine. My brother and I followed a recipe from the King Arthur Whole Grain Baking cookbook and accidentally made 8x more pancake mix than we would actually need. (The three tablespoons of baking powder should have been our first clue.) Luckily it stores indefinitely in the freezer.

Went through the cabinets and decided to add dried cherries and white chocolate to the mix. The batter had to sit for a while while the oats soaked up the liquid, then I started cooking up the pancakes. High quality ingredients, high quality pancakes.

This SMPX fed six people, and got rave reviews from all of them. I think everyone had seconds.

**** 1/2
We give whole grain white chocolate cherry pancakes 4.5/5 stars.
Next week: TBA

smpx 15: peaches and cream

Back to fruit again. For peaches & cream pancakes, I chopped up a peach the librarian at one of our rural extension libraries gave to me. I added the peach and some cream to the batter, then laid out more sliced peaches and poured a little cream on the finished pancakes.

They turned out well. I was worried they would be undercooked since the batter was so thick and lumpy, but it turned out fine, and they tasted kind of like a peach cake.

***1/2
We give peaches & cream pancakes 3.5/5 stars. Next week: smores?

smpx 13: cran-apple

This recipe was all our idea. We added dried cranberries and diced apple to the batter, then threw in some cran-apple drink mix. The result: bright pink cran-apple pancakes!

Good, but even with all the added fruit and drink mix, the cran-apple flavor was very subtle. Adding the color and eating pink pancakes was our favorite part.

smpx 10: pear

We wanted to keep things simple this week, mostly because last week's SMPX was so complicated. So we used the whole wheat buttermilk mix and added some diced pears to the batter for SMPX 10: pear pancakes.

Easy, quick, and tasty. Overall, a good way to celebrate our week 10 milestone. Next week: something weirder.

smpx9: toasted coconut pancakes

This was the most intense SMPX yet. We used a recipe from The Cafe Pongo Cookbook and made toasted coconut pancakes with pineapple ginger compote. We used fresh pineapple and fresh ginger (this was the first time I've ever bought ginger root and grated it myself). I burned the first batch of "toasted" coconut, but luckily we had enough to try again.

Making the actual pancakes was easy. The pineapple compote was a lot of work. I don't even really know what compote is. But it tasted good.

smpx7: apple

whole wheat batter mix
1/4 c. applesauce
sliced apples on plate

I used more applesauce instead of maple syrup and loved it. I want to make these again.

smpx3: bananarama

Just mashed up a banana in the batter and added some sliced banana to our plates.

smpx2: blueberry

Made with farmer's market blueberries. This was a prerequisite; there's no way we could do SMPX without making blueberry pancakes. Tasty, but safe. We're looking forward to the weird stuff.

the original smpx: blackberry panckes

It started with a trip to a local pick-your-own blackberry farm. With cartons and cartons of blackberries in our fridge, we were trying to come up with creative ways to eat the berries at every meal. Blackberry pancakes seemed a great idea. Little did we know we were starting a tradition.

I'm no great master of cooking, so most recipes are pancake mix + special ingredient. When the ingredients get complicated the execution is sloppy and full of guesswork. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the original Sunday Morning Pancake Experiment (SMPX).

The Recipe
Bisquick Heart Healthy Pancake Mix
added 1/2 c fresh blackberries