Give Pancake Batter 10x The Flavor With This Fall Ingredient

Pancakes are one of breakfast's most versatile foodstuffs. Even your classic, buckwheat, and buttermilk pancake recipes aside, their toppings and mix-ins are endlessly adaptable. They are also particularly conducive to the seasonal treatment, with cranberries brilliant for winter, and blueberries the obvious botanical for spring and fall. Autumn, of course, also brings its own behemoth ingredient: the great pumpkin!

Okay, pumpkin, and the famed "spice" that often follows, can be quite divisive. But maybe fall's favorite squash has simply been corrupted by artificial flavors and less successful pairings over recent years. However, pancakes are the ideal vehicle for pumpkin thanks to their customizable nature, and because pumpkin puree blends seamlessly in with pancake batter. They're also affordably made to accommodate for any trial and error; make pumpkin pancakes as spiced as you like, or pare them down to the fruit's subtly sweet, somewhat earthy basics.

First, make sure to grab pumpkin ​​puree, rather than the almost identical pumpkin pie filling. The latter typically comes packed with a lot of the items that make it taste like the titular dessert while puree should include pumpkin alone, which you can gussy up as much or as little as you like. You can more or less factor pumpkin ​​puree into the pancake recipe of your preference, tinkering with complementary additions, such as cinnamon and nutmeg, as you go.

Pumpkin puree is definitely a wet ingredient, so pay attention to your batter to make sure its consistency is neither too thin nor too thick. Pancakes made with something close to 1 cup of flour can handle about ½ cup of pumpkin puree. A touch of extra flour or milk helps you adjust for density. Once poured into circles in your pan, look for the batter side's telltale craters to know when to flip, and you'll have golden pumpkin pancakes in just a few more minutes. Pumpkin pancakes are also excellent with another classic fall flavor: real maple syrup.