Christmas Pancakes

This morning I made Christmas Pancakes for my girls. How did I do that? Earlier in the year we found a frying pan that is custom molded with four silver dollar pancake molds in the following shapes: Santa, Frosty, Gingerbread Man, and Christmas Tree.

It was at Target, on one of their end-caps, and we do family breakfast in my house so this was an easy purchase. I thought i was getting a cast iron pan, which is great for frying things, but when I got home and put it to use I found out it's aluminum. It does have a non-stick surface, more on that later.

Here is a link to the pan:
Nordic Ware Christmas Morning Pancake Pan

The Recipe

Now pancakes are pretty common, you can buy the mix in a box if you want, or whip it up from any number of recipes. My preferred recipe is from Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking book. I'm a huge Alton Brown fan, and his pancake recipe is visited regularly in my house.

His approach to baking is pretty simple; assemble the wet good and dry goods in separate bowls, do whatever special thing on the side you need to do, and then bring it all together and get it in or on the oven.

For pancakes, it goes something like this:

The Dry Goods

• 2 Cups Flour
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 Teaspoon Salt
• 3 Tablespoons Sugar

The Wet Goods

• 2 Large Eggs
• 2 Cups Buttermilk
• 4 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter (melted and cooled)

Breaking the Recipe

I don't actually do much to break this particular recipe. Pancakes are pancakes after all. Most of the time I'll add some cinnamon to the dry goods to give it a little zip. We are also fond of adding some vanilla extract to the wet goods. When I got my current job, I discovered the joys of almond milk, if you add that to the recipe instead of buttermilk, the pancakes come out almost malted - it's a neat twist that surprises people.

If I'm feeling especially crafty, I add a few tablespoons of vegetable oil to the mix and break out the waffle iron. The oil helps make the resulting waffles (and pancakes) a little crispy on the outside without burning them.

Making It

There isn't much to say here, they are pancakes after all, just assemble both sets of goods, then bring them together, let it rest for five minutes or so, and start making pancakes!

This is the mixture, ready to go. I use a 1/2 cup for pouring because it gives me more than I need and I can play with the size of the pancake. That's less relevant with this special frying pan, but I still need something to pour with!

Here are the pancakes in the Christmas frying pan. It's not much to see because the molded side is under the batter. Just you wait though!

Here they are flipped into a ready frying pan. It's hot and greased so they don't stick. Why do I need a second pan? Look to the picture before this one, the pancake batter is on the mold but there isn't anything giving heat to the other side - and that specialty pan isn't the kind you flip them in. Or maybe you do, I didn't see a clean way to do it.

Plating


Below you see the final product! Note the impressive side of bacon we also had available. I have a trick for cooking bacon, but that's for another day. As you can see, a simple batch of pancake batter makes a good number of silver dollar pancakes. My girls loved it.

Afterthoughts

Pancakes are pancakes. Any simple recipe can work, but they all need that extra special whatever to make them 'home' don't they? In my house that's cinnamon and vanilla. you could pour in fresh fruit chunks, chocolate chips, or anything and they will take it. Pancakes are good like that.

The Nordic Ware frying pan that made these ones Christmas? I wish it was cast iron. The non-stick surface isn't non-stick enough for me, and I like cast iron. I don't hate the product, but I doubt I'll buy one of their other pancake pans for summer use. These ones are worth the not-so-non-stick from Thanksgiving to Christmas to make it more fun for my kids.

Best of luck!