November Pancakes: A Twist on the Traditional

Tonight, we had breakfast for dinner. Matty cooked up some pancakes and bacon. While I don't dislike pancakes and bacon by any means, and I was grateful for Matty's willingness to both prepare the meal and complete the clean-up tonight, pancakes and bacon just aren't my favorite meal. I wouldn't choose it on my own--morning or evening, but I'll eat it, albeit with a relative lack of enthusiasm.

At first, I had resigned myself to the typical topping: maple syrup (no butter, though). I'm actually a pretty big fan of maple syrup. When I do eat pancakes--or waffles, for that matter--I pretty much douse them in syrup. But I pulled our "syrup" out of our fridge tonight to find it wasn't the real thing, and in fact, its first ingredient was high fructose corn syrup.

To be honest, I don't really know why everyone is so up in arms about high fructose corn syrup right now, but I know no one thinks it's a good idea in anything. Given my tendency to drown my pancakes in syrup, and the general uproar over high fructose corn syrup, I decided to ask myself what else I could possibly use to top my pancakes.

November Pancakes were the delicious result of my improvisations.

You will need:
1) just-add-water pancake mix (We used Aunt Jemima Original Complete)
2) water according to pancake mix directions
3) dried cranberries (I used Craisins)
4) ground cinnamon (I used Penzey's)
5) pumpkin butter (I used Private Selection Oregon Pumpkin Butter)

Simply prepare pancakes as directed, and:
1) spread with as much pumpkin butter as desired
2) sprinkle with as much cinnamon as desired (don't go overboard)
3) top with as many cranberries as desired (I was pretty generous)
4) drizzle with just a bit of maple syrup

The result was, well, beautiful--to start. The bright red cranberries sitting atop a bed of orange pumpkin butter created quite a pleasing, autumnal aesthetic effect. I was tempted to take a picture--and in fact wish I had, but it smelled so good and I was so hungry that I found myself devouring my newly-created November Pancakes even as I contemplated whether or not I should photograph them. By the time I made up my mind that I should, I had only half a pancake (of the original three) left on my plate. Such is life. Guess you'll just have to make them yourself and see for yourself. :-)