Bacon Pancakes

In my family, we have two rules about pancakes: You can only eat pancakes with real maple syrup (warm, with butter mixed in) and pancakes must be accompanied by breakfast meat. When my son was younger, he used to laugh at me as I cut up my pancakes and sausage or bacon so that I had exactly enough of each so that every bite could contain a bite of pancake and a bite of meat. Of course, when he tried it himself, he stopped laughing. Now he won’t eat pancakes without breakfast meat either.

This morning he woke up with an idea: “mom, we should put bacon in our pancakes, then dip them in syrup.” So that’s just what we did.

I am currently attempting to remove over-processed food and refined sugars from our diet, so we made whole wheat pancakes. You can substitute your favorite pancake batter if desired.

This isn’t the fanciest, or maybe even the most original recipe I’ve ever made. But the fact that my kiddo came up with it and was so proud of his invention made it worth a post.

Let’s start with bacon. I always cook my bacon in the oven. It’s so much less messy than stovetop bacon, and it keeps the bacon from curling up, which is very helpful for this recipe.

Place 6 strips of bacon on a rack (I use cooling racks) over a sheet pan lined with foil. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 – 15 minutes (check often!) until brown and crispy. Remove to a paper towel lined plate and cut each strip in half – kitchen shears work great. I don't have any pictures of this part, because I always get distracted by mmm... bacon and forget to take pictures!

Now for the pancakes:

(Mostly) Whole wheat pancakes

1 ½ C whole wheat flour

½  C all purpose flour

3 Tb brown sugar

½ tsp salt

1 ½ tsp baking powder

1 ½ tsp baking soda

2 eggs

1 Tb vegetable oil, melted butter, or melted coconut oil

1 ½ C buttermilk*

In a medium bowl, combine flours, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Add wet ingredients and mix just until all dry ingredients are blended with the wet. A few lumps are fine – don’t overmix, it will make your pancakes tough.

*If you don’t have buttermilk, you can mix 1 Tb lemon juice, fill to 1 ½ C with milk, and let sit for 5 minutes. I usually do this because whenever I buy buttermilk, I use it once, then it ends up going bad before I can find another use for it!

Heat a non-stick skillet or griddle, then spoon the batter in strips about the same size as the strips of bacon. Lay one strip of bacon in each pancake, pressing it down softly into the batter. Spread a thin layer of batter over the top, just to cover the bacon. Flip and cook on the second side.

Heat about a cup of maple syrup with 2 tablespoons of butter until the butter melts. You can pour the syrup over the pancakes and eat with a fork, but we like to serve the syrup on a little bowl or cup on the side and “rip and dip" our pancakes.