Sausage Pancakes-on-Sticks

From The Pioneer Woman via FoodNetwork



Ingredients:
16 breakfast sausage links
3 cups pancake mix
1 cup yellow cornmeal
Sprinkle of cinnamon
1 whole egg, slightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups water
Canola oil, for frying
Warm pancake syrup, for serving

Directions:
Cook the breakfast sausage links in a cast-iron skillet, turning occasionally until done.

In a large bowl, combine the pancake mix, cornmeal and cinnamon. Stir to combine.

Add the eggs, vanilla and water, adding more water as needed for the batter to become slightly thick (but not overly gloopy.) Start out by adding 1 cup, then work your way up to 3 cups or more.

Heat some canola oil in a large pot over medium-high heat to about 350 degrees F. Drop in a bit of batter to see if it's ready; the batter should immediately start to sizzle but should not immediately brown/burn.

Insert chopsticks into the cooked breakfast sausages so that they're two-thirds of the way through. Dip the sausages into the batter and allow any excess to drip off for a couple of seconds. Carefully drop into the oil (stick and all) and use tongs or a spoon to make sure it doesn't hit the bottom of the pan and stick. Flip it here and there to ensure even browning, and remove it from the oil when the outside is deep golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes.

Serve with warm pancake syrup.

Comments:
I had some trouble with the batter and this recipe made about 10 times more batter that we needed. I used my deep fryer to cook these and it worked fine. They were good, but I don't know that we'd try them again. The batter threw the whole thing off I think...

Better Blueberry Pancakes

From The Biggest Loser Cookbook



Ingredients:
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup whole-grain oat flour (I used whole wheat)
1 large egg white, lightly beaten
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Directions:
In a bowl, combine the buttermilk, flour, egg, baking soda, vanilla, and salt. Whisk just until blended. Sitr in the blueberries. Let stand for 10 minutes.

Cook on griddle in 1/8 cup dollops. Makes two 4-pancake servings.

Comments:
I left the blueberries out of the batter (I don't like them) and just put them on top of Adam's stack. For being whole-wheat and small, these were very good. They look tiny, but they'll fill you up. I modified the recipe directions a little. They wanted you to cook these in a skillet, which seemed kind of stupid to me. Sometimes it's like this cookbook was written for people who don't know anything about cooking...

Apple Pancakes

From Penzeys Spices



Ingredients:
1/4 Cup butter (1/2 stick), divided
4 eggs
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 Cup all-purpose flour
3/4 Cup milk
1/2 tsp. salt
2 medium baking apples, peeled and thinly sliced
3 TB. cinnamon sugar, divided

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400°. Divide butter evenly between two 9 inch pie plates and put them in the oven to melt the butter. Rotate the pie plates until the butter coats the bottom and the sides. To make dividing the ingredients between the two plates easier, we used a 4-Cup measuring cup as our mixing bowl. Beat eggs, vanilla, flour, milk, and salt on medium speed for 1 minute. Toss the sliced apples with 2 TB. of the cinnamon sugar. Arrange 1/2 of the apple slices in each pan so they cover the bottom in pretty much a single layer. Pour 1/2 the egg mixture over the apple slices in each pan. Sprinkle the remaining cinnamon sugar over the batter in each pan. Bake until puffed and golden brown, 20-25 minutes. Serve right away, while still puffy, with warm syrup.

Comments:
When Adam picked up juniper berries a while back he also picked up a catalog. This was a recipe that caught his eye. I had originally planned to make it last weekend, but luckily the apples toughed it out and were still good this morning. I used a deep dish pie pan so it doesn't look like the picture on their website, but it was still good. I cut everything in half to make only one, but we probably could have eaten two of them. Yum! Oh, and I didn't use butter - I just sprayed the pie pan with Pam and it worked fine.