By Dennis Weaver
Our daughter Katie and her husband Josh are off to school, one more semester. She’s a good cook.
She morphed a pancake mix into carrot cake pancakes. We liked them so much that we brought the concept back to our test kitchen and started experimenting. We added grated carrots and spices to Buttermilk Pancakes, Hawaiian Pancakes, Multi-Grain Pancakes, and Gingerbread Pancakes. The results were outstanding. We are convinced that you can do the same with almost any pancake mix.
We added 1 3/4 cups grated carrots, two tablespoons of sugar, and two teaspoons cinnamon to two cups of mix. It worked perfectly. With the Multi-Grain Pancakes, we added an egg for more structure and to better hold the pancakes together. With the Gingerbread Pancakes, we omitted the cinnamon since they are already spiced.
The pancakes took a little longer to cook because of the extra moisture in the carrots. For some, we added more water to get the right consistency. Other than that, preparation was exactly as specified in the package directions.
The carrots colored the batter an attractive orange and when they were done cooking the pancakes were a pretty shade of brown.
- Buttermilk pancakes. These were perfect, very reminiscent of a carrot cake.
- Gingerbread pancakes. Healthier and moister. People in the store really liked these—gingerbread with carrots added.
- Hawaiian pancakes. There is lot of finely ground pineapple in this mix and the pineapple dominated the carrots. They were very good. The pineapple hid most of the carrot flavor.
- Multi-Grain pancakes. These are my favorite—tons of grains and still very moist from the carrots. We made these with Vietnamese cinnamon so there was a very distinctive cinnamon flavor. These are very good.
Hands down the preferred syrup was Buttermilk Syrup.
We demonstrated that you can make carrot pancakes with almost any mix. They’re easy to make, nutritious, and very good.
