Today's been a really great day here. Chris and I went to bed super late once again. We started watching Food Network's 'Worst Cooks in America' last night on Netflix. We watched eight episodes last night. It's a really fun show to watch. You learn some great cooking tips, feel a great deal better about your own cooking skills (hopefully), and get to laugh at all the ridiculous stuff they do.
Chris and I have had some good laughs together watching it, and it's fun to try to pick who's going to win, and who's going to get kicked off next.
Chris helped me get the chores done around the house, and things got knocked out pretty quickly. Laundry was put away, pets were fed, dishes were washed, straightened the house.
After some ridiculous cravings last night resulting from surrendering on my steroid taper and going back to 15mgs, I decided to make chocolate chip pumpkin pancakes. Chris was really excited about the chocolate chip part. He was even nice enough to peel, cube, and boil a neck pumpkin from our garden for me. Knife work with dense food items are very hard on my hands because of the rheumatoid arthritis. So I never refuse help when it's available.
I'm keeping 1.25 cups of pumpkin out for my pancakes, and putting the rest into Ziploc bags in the freezer in 1.25c portions to make these again later.
I'm going to make a maple whipped cream for the pancakes using a half cup of the heavy cream I have in the refrigerator from making the Apple Galette the other day and whipping it together with 3 tablespoons of maple syrup.
In a mixing bowl I put 2 cups of cake flour. I chose cake flour because it makes for a lighter and fluffier pancake. If you only have all purpose flour available you can remove two tablespoons of the AP flour and replace it with two tablespoons of cornstarch to cut some of the gluten in your recipe. It helps keep your pancakes fluffy. I added 2 teaspoons of baking powder, one teaspoon of baking soda, as well as a half teaspoon of fine sea salt. At this point you can get a bit creative with your fall spices, but I used 2 and a half teaspoons of cinnamon, a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg (nutmeg is strong and a little goes a long way), and a half teaspoon of apple pie spice. I tossed in roughly one cup of semi-sweet mini chocolate chips that I happened to have in my pantry, but you can use whatever kind you prefer! These would probably be good with blueberries if you're a fan of them.
I grabbed another mixing bowl and put in one and a quarter cups of pumpkin. You can use fresh or canned. I used fresh. I added a third cup dark brown sugar, one and a half cups of whole milk, a large egg, and a quarter teaspoon of vanilla extract into the bowl. I put in three tablespoons of vegetable oil, mixed the ingredients in this bowl together with a hand mixer. Then stirred them into the ingredients in my original bowl scraping the sides with a rubber spatula. (I love my rubber spatula)
This batter is going to be thick compared to your generic from a box pancake mixes. Don't try to thin it out, it's a thick batter. Pan fry your pancakes in unsalted butter or margarine, replacing the butter in the pan between batches and wiping out the old butter with a paper towel so you don't get a burnt flavor.
If you're a stickler for uniformly sized pancakes I suggest using an ice
cream scoop.
I like to pour my pancake batter over into a measuring cup because it's easier to work with that way at the stove. This recipe made roughly five cups of batter. The amount of pancakes really depends on how well you scrape your bowls and what size pancakes you make.
We make ours pretty big. Smaller ones are cute if you have the patience for all that. We don't, haha.
Our kitchen got really hot, so I asked Chris to come cook them for me while I stepped outside to cool off.
With my MS I don't handle heat well, and the hotter I get the sicker I get. We prematurely took our air conditioner out, and it still gets too hot in our kitchen without it when I cook. Even with having the screen door open on the still warm days like today its too hot.
Lucky for me Chris is really great about helping me out with things. Plus I like doing things together with him. I've found we've been trying a number of new things since I've started blogging.
I set my oven to its Keep Warm setting and we put the pancakes on a baking pan with aluminum foil in the oven to keep warm as we finished the rest. One great thing about this recipe is they freeze and reheat really well. So all of the effort at least will turn into one or two easy breakfasts later on top of this one. Set the pan of pancakes on the top of the oven to cool after everyone's had their fill. After cooled simply lay them flat in a Ziploc bag and freeze for another day. Reheat in the oven.
Chris likes his pancakes with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and maple syrup.
For mine I used the maple whipped cream I made and maple syrup.
Chris doesn't like whipped cream. I know, crazy right? Of course, he thinks water chestnuts are good, and I think they are the devil of Chinese food.
This definitely isn't something you want to make if you're low on figurative spoons. You have to stay organized and wind up with a bit of cleanup. They are delicious though and make an abundant amount that can be frozen for later, making them well worth the effort on a good day.
We got filled up on delicious pancakes, and Chris is now playing Madden on the Xbox One. Soon we're going to run out to the store. We'll probably curl up in bed and watch a bit of Netflix when we get home. I just saw the second season of Chasing Life hit Netflix today. I really enjoy that show. We have an early morning tomorrow, that's going to continue into a very busy day, so we don't want to stay up too late.
You would think with all of the time I spend in hospitals, doctors offices, taking medicine, doing chemotherapy, etc the last thing I'd want to do is watch things about hospitals and doctors offices on television. You'd think. But since I know all the jargon and what not there's a sense of familiarity to it and I can relate. Whatever entertains us I suppose?
Here's an easy reference version of the list of ingredients for the pancakes if you'd like to try to make them yourselves. Let me know in the comments if you do and how you like them!
Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Pancakes
1 1/4 cups pumpkin (fresh or canned, I use fresh)
2 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon apple or pumpkin pie spice
1 cup semi-sweet mini chocolate chips
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups whole milk
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Maple Whipped Cream
1/2 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons maple syrup
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