Pancakes, Pajamas, and The Empire Strikes Back

In the wee hours of the morning (5:30am) Boy and Hubby left for an early morning baseball practice.  Shocking! The Boy and baseball? A while after the two early birds left, I was joined in bed....get yours heads out of the gutter!! My adorable 5 year old nephew crawled in to cuddle.  We were joined shortly after by the two cats who always seem to want some sort of attention. 

We decided it was time to get up when we both had to pee. I know, that was too much information. With the big boys gone, the Lego came back out, we watched "The Fox and the Hound".  Of course while the movie was playing I was able to sneak into the Little Kitchen to mix up some pancakes.  Nephew wanted to help with the flipping but I was worried about the hot griddle and such...he did have fun watching though.  Using my intergalactic pancake moulds can be tricky though.

Top to bottom: Tie fighter, Millennium Falcon, and an X-wing

The Millennium Falcon gets a dab of butter and a dose of maple!

Not only did I get to use my moulds this morning, I also got to give my pancake pen a try as well as my new griddle! (Nothing but fun times in the Little Kitchen!)

Put together your favourite pancake recipe. I used this one today. 

Pre heat the griddle and oil up the moulds and place them on the griddle to heat up.

If you have a pancake pen, load it up with batter. If not use about 1/4 cup of batter per mould and a knife to help spread the batter into all the nooks and crannies.

Cook the pancakes until all bubbly and dry on the edges.  You will have to cook the pancakes longer on the first the side than you normally would. 

If the pancakes happen to stick to the edges of the mould, use a knife to scrape and push the pancake out.

Flip and finish cooking.

Transfer to a baking sheet in a warm oven to keep until all the batter is cooked and made into pancakey goodness.

Half the galaxy could have come over for breakfast!

Serve with maple syrup and butter!!

What did we do while eating our pancakes this morning?  We stayed in our pajamas and watched the Empire Strikes Back of course!!

Until next time, stay warm and eat well!

Ricotta Vanilla Pancakes

Let me just start off by telling you how difficult it is to concentrate when there are Nerf guns shoot darts all over the living room....it is even more difficult to stay out of it when you have your own Nerf gun!! 

OK, with that out of the way, I can now talk about food. Pancakes.  Ricotta pancakes to be precise. I found a lovely looking ricotta pancake recipe here at Liv Life for blueberry ricotta pancakes...they really look fabulous, as does her other blog entries.  I didn't have any lemons or blueberries on hand, or the spelt flour so I needed to adapt and experiment a little.  When making pancakes of any sort in this house, I also must double the recipe....hungry  teen....

Since I did not have any blueberries on hand to make the scrumptious sauce, I served the pancakes with some fresh fruit, bacon and maple syrup!!

Ricotta Pancakes

 Adapted from Liv Life

Print recipe

1 cup flour

½ cup whole wheat flour

2 tbsp ground flax seed

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

Healthy grating of nutmeg

1 vanilla bean, split and scraped

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 ½ cups low fat ricotta

4 eggs

1 cup buttermilk (or 1 tbsp lemon juice with enough milk to make 1 cup)

In a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients, set aside.

This photo is missing the flax, it was a last minute addition that worked beautifully!

 In another bowl, thoroughly mix together the wet ingredients.  This is your chance to mix the wet ingredients all together and make sure the vanilla bean seeds are well mixed in.

Split and scrape the vanilla bean, make sure all of those little beadlettes of vanilla goodness go into the we mixture.

Combine the wet and dry ingredients and mix until just combined...the fewer turns of the spoon, the better.

 Heat a skillet or non stick pan, grease lightly with a brush of oil or melted butter.

Scoop ¼ cup of batter onto the skillet.  Let the pancakes cook until bubbles form on the tops and they appear dry on the edges.

Flip the pancakes and cook a few minutes more until browned.

Move cooked pancakes to a foil lined dish to keep warm until you have finished cooking all the pancakes.

Serve with fresh fruit and maple syrup.

 Until next time, stay warm and eat well!