PERFECT PUMPKIN SPICE PANCAKES AND PEACH BUTTER
Happy Thanksgiving!!! I am up early before anyone else has risen. My son and his wife with my angelic granddaughters, my daughter and her husband, my two cats and my husband. I adore all of them being here, but I love being up in the peaceful morning also. Yesterday when I got up I prepared these pancakes, that everyone loved. However, I had bought a new food processor, since parts of my old one had gotten lost in the move. A series of moves really. In any event, when I was unpacking it I somehow sliced into my thumb. Who knew the thumb was such a bleeder! So my first “thanks” for the day should be that it finally quit bleeding. As Americans we still have so much to be thankful for, so it shouldn’t be hard for me to have a lot more things to give thanks for all day long. That I have a family here and each one is responsible for a dish so I don’t have to do it all, like back in the day, is a big one!
Anyway, I substituted my new Gluten-free flour that I am in love with, and these pancakes turned out beautifully. I divided this and added the chocolate chips to part and none in part, as my guests had differing requests. They are great either way. Hope you love them too. I made about eight (8) 6- to 8-inch pancakes with this recipe and still had some left over, which I refrigerated. My daughter had tried this recipe and said it lasts for a week. These are more of a dense cake, not extremely fluffy, which is the way I like them.
We made some peach butter, and though you are thinking “peach butter with pumpkin pancakes?” you are wrong. It added a nice dimension of flavors…along with a good maple syrup. All I can say is to try it…it is so easy to make. (You won’t get the same results if you substitute for the butter or the whole milk.)
PUMPKIN SPICE PANCAKES
Ingredients:
3 cups Namaste GLUTEN FREE Perfect Flour Blend (or all-purpose flour)
3 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)
1 regular can of pumpkin puree (or equivalent fresh if you prefer)
1/2 cup plus 1 Tbs light or dark brown sugar
2 eggs
4 Tbsp canola or vegetable oil
2-1/2 cups whole milk*
Directions:
1. In a large bowl, add flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, and chocolate chips (optional) then stir lightly until combined. Set aside.
2. In another bowl add the pumpkin, brown sugar, egg, oil, and WHOLE milk and blend with using a hand mixer ( or in a blender). I used the whisk attachment on my mixer. Incorporate the ingredients very well.
3. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk by hand gently to combine the ingredients. The batter is extremely thick. Do not thin it out. Whisk until *just* combined, no more. A few lumps may remain. Taste the batter. If you want to add more spices, go ahead. There is always room with spices to make it your own. Well, not always, but in this case. I really didn’t believe that a batter this thick would work, but I thought I would give it a try. It is truly very thick and I put a very large dollop in the pan, let it cook until I knew I could flip it over. Then, using a large, greased spatula I flattened the pancake. Hence, I had to let it cook on that side and then flip it again. Sounds worse than it is…and worth it. It is to be noted that these do not make beautiful, perfectly round pancakes. We’ll call them rustic.
4. Heat a griddle or skillet over medium heat. Coat generously with butter. Once hot, drop about 1/4 cup of batter on the griddle if you want a small pancake. Since we like ours large, I put more like 3/4 cup. Cook until the edges look dry and bubbles begin to form on the sides, about 1 minute. This recipe doesn’t bubble in the middle like typical batter. Flip and cook on the other side until cooked through. Coat griddle/skillet again with butter for each pancake or batch of pancakes.
5. If you need to, keep pancakes warm in a preheated 200F degree oven until all pancakes are cooked or serve them staggered. Pancakes taste best right after they are made. Pancakes freeze well also, maybe up to two months.
PEACH BUTTER
1 stick of butter, at room temp
1-1/2 cups fresh or frozen peaches diced fine
3 tsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp sea salt
2 TBSP peach nectar
Pulse until combined well in a food processor (be careful with your thumb!). There should still be bits of peaches visible. This will store well in the refrigerator.
Enjoy! and have a blessed Thanksgiving Day.
me pedestrians also, so all I get is a blurred picture of a car in motion. In any event, at that moment she whips around and comes marching toward us, at a pretty good clip I might add. We are like “uh-oh” “OMG” and being the naives that we are, just stood there like deer in the headlights until she was upon us talking in loud, non-stop French as I tried to understand something of what she said. It boiled down to “I am going to call the police if you don’t delete that picture.” But she couldn’t understand that there was no picture with her in it! Let me tell you, she was scary in those 6-inch spiked black heels and leather. She grabbed my phone and was going through it looking for that non-existent picture and she wanted to go through all the way to the end…all 697 pictures worth. I finally took back my phone from this Asian Amazon and said enough is enough! Well, as you might guess, that didn’t sit very well with her. She grabbed my left wrist and jerked me around to face her at the same time breaking one of my favorite necklaces off and into pieces with her other hand. all those pretty pieces tinkling across the sidewalk. In my whole life I have never been physically restrained in anger! I was in shock…all I could think to do was try to pry her hand off my wrist and yell “you broke my frickin’ necklace!” over and over while also keeping her from digging those spiked heels into my foot or leg. My daughter on the other hand, having been raised with three brothers, was attempting to pull her arm off me with her pointy fingernails. I guess the claws worked because I was released and she backed away. However, she thought it was me who scratched her and she was not a happy camper, so as I bent down to pick up the remnants of my necklace next thing i know I am being whacked in the face with the umbrella (I told you to remember that weapon) and Miss BDSM waving forearm in my face like I had broken it and shouting French obscenities. Amanda had apparently scratcher enough to at least get her to unhand me; that’s my girl!. In any event, that umbrella strike hurt like heck! Right across my cheekbone on the right. Then, of course, I’m yelling “You hit me in the face!”….over and over. Do you think that umbrella turns into a whip? At that point, my daughter and I were seeing red and moving toward her aggressively still shouting the same thing, but my son-in-law was gently pulling us back, trying to be the voice of reason, and all I could think of was that she hit me and it hurt and this was a Crazy person (with a capital C). He pulled us into a clothing shop and at first they were like “you can’t stay in here,” but then I showed them where she hit me and they saw who she was, so they very nicely shut the door to keep her out and told her to go away. I apologize for not having pictures, but we didn’t stick around long to take more. Try to visualize this scene and wish that it had all been caught on video…which I am sure it was but nobody sent it to me. The only appeasing factor was that Bradley reminded me that tomorrow we would wake up and still be us and she would wake up and still be a prostitute. But we never even made it to L’Opera.