When Life Isn't A Piece of Cake....Bake one.
The Apple zucchini carrot mini muffin is moist and tender with tiny specks of green and orange from the veggies. It's spiced with sweet cinnamon and fragrant cardamom. I honestly didn't realize how much I liked cardamom till I tried this muffin. It just gives it a little something more than just a straight cinnamon flavor. Then you get tiny chunks of sweet and tart apple and a but of crunch from the oat topping. It's truly a treat in the morning.
Read MoreGrowing up I always dreamed of making pancakes for my family on Saturday mornings. So no matter how little sleep I get, I make sure that I'm up, making those pancakes for them now. Unfortunately, my husband is not a pancake person. It broke my heart when we first got married. I almost had to sacrifice my dreams because of him! Lucky for me my kids looove pancakes. So, he's just gonna have to suck it up for the family, It's just what grown ups do.
So this morning I asked these little monsters....I mean children what they wanted to eat and one said pancakes while the other said oatmeal. Great, short order cook. But wait... does anyone remember the griddle cakes that they use to have at IHOP...before it was IHOP? They were pancakes with cream of wheat cooked inside. They were my favorite! Fluffy buttermilk pancakes...tender on the outside and creamy with a slight gritty texture on the inside from those bits of wheat.
Sadly, IHOP took the griddle cakes off their menu...booo. So I decided to bring them back... home. I mixed the hot cereal (I know she asked for oatmeal, but I liked this idea better. And she's two, she'll get over it) with the pancake recipe I use every weekend and it was fantastic!
For this recipe, I used cooked cream of wheat. I did it in the microwave, though I regret it every time I do, because I end up with a volcano cream of wheat in my microwave and it gets EVERYWHERE. I should have taken a picture of the epic fail, but I was too busy cleaning and cursing myself for forgetting to watch the time. Nevertheless, 2 batches of cream of wheat later, we were in pancake bliss.
Mix, Sizzle, Flip
I honestly cannot remember where I got the original buttermilk pancake recipe. It was originally an IHOP copycat recipe, but I've looked and haven't seen the same measurements anywhere else. I've had it for years. The paper is stained with butter and batter. But It's the best pancake recipe I've ever tried, and I've tried so many. They were always too dense. This yields a light and fluffy pancake every time. I've tried adding wheat germ, flax meal and whole wheat flour to it, and it still holds up. You have to try these seriously awesome weekend pancakes.
When trying to take the perfect shot before they can eat their breakfast....
Yields: 1 dozen medium sized pancakes
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
2 tbs melted butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup cream of wheat, cooked
ghee or butter for greasing the griddle
Cook cream of wheat according to package directions
Whisk all the dry ingredients together.
Whisk eggs and buttermilk together in a separate bowl
Add buttermilk mixture to the dry ingredients. Add butter and sugar. Mix to combine.
Add cooked cream of wheat and whisk well. If batter looks too thick, add 1 tbs of buttermilk at a time till it reaches a pancake batter consistency. Not too thin.
Grease a hot griddle or pan with ghee. I prefer ghee so that it doesn't burn while cooking the pancakes. Spoon 1/3 cup of batter onto the greased griddle
Cook till the edge look dry, then flip and cook till golden brown.
