Photo from Flickr by ChotdaCreative Commons Copyright Some rights reserved.
I don’t know if I knew this and forgot it, or if today was one of those “blinding flash of the obvious” moments.
If you have bananas that are going spotty and brown, besides using them in smoothies, freezing them for banana bread and sticking a Popsicle stick into them and freezing them for “pops”~I suddenly realized this morning that I could make pancakes and slice the bananas up into them!
Talk about delicious! They were so sweet that I didn’t even need to use syrup. Plus my two kiddos that turn up their nose at a fresh banana that isn’t pristine and white gobbled them right up.
One banana was enough for a batch of pancakes. I just made up my regular pancakes recipe from good ol’ Betty Crocker-I like to substitute wheat flour for part of it, add in about a tablespoon of wheat germ for added fiber, a tsp of vanilla flavoring (just to make it MORE yummy) and a few splashes of extra milk for thinner pancakes (I like thinner rather than hugely thick).
Once the batter was done I funneled it into my clean large re purposed ketchup bottle (less drips and easier to control), screwed the top on and started squeezing the batter onto the skillet. Once the batter was on the skillet I simply sliced the banana right onto the batter as I needed it. I guess if you were using fresher bananas you could slice them ahead of time, but these were pretty soft and if I had tried ahead of time they would have been a squishy sticky mess.
Just flip and finish as usual. Yum! If you really must you can use butter, syrup or a dusting of powdered sugar on top. Or you can go all out like the photo and add chopped nuts, chunks of banana, and maybe even some whipped cream (then you’ll feel like you are at IHOP).
A little cinnamon is a nice addition to the Betty Crocker recipe (with or without the bananas)
I’ll have to try this. My husband loves banana nut pancakes!
I actually have mushed up the too-soft banana in my pancake batter and done it that way. One of my kiddos thinks banana pancakes are icky but will eat them if they can’t see the banana. Go figure.
Do you make a double batch and freeze some for mornings when someone really wants a pancake and there isn’t enough time? ;o)
~Dawn-Ah yes, cinnamon makes most baked/sweet things taste better. I also have a baking spice mix that I like to throw in everything (although I forgot to add any on Sat.) that is based on pumpkin pie spice.
M2F-Hope your Hubby likes them, it couldn’t be simpler. I just love things that taste “WOW” but are easy to make.
Jill-lucky for me I don’t have to hide much, my kids eat a lot of things. For the pancakes I frequently make a large batch of “silver dollar” sized pancakes and flash freeze them, then throw them in a freezer bag for quick kiddo breakfasts. The quality isn’t quite as nice as fresh, but it is acceptable, and at 6am when the kiddos are squalling for breakfast and I haven’t had my first cup of joe-well, it works!
I found that cooling the pancakes on a cooling rack over my cast iron skillet (the only way this works for me, I don’t know why) before I pop them in the freezer improves the quality a lot. Like all great discoveries, this was an accident one morning in the midst of a triple-batch frying session. Don’t know if you’ve tried it or not but thought I’d share just in case.