Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Happy Memorial Day. Being home from work today and not having church to get ready for, I have time to make a fun breakfast. Not that I don't make breakfast that often, on the contrary, I get to make breakfast once or twice per week, most weeks. But this is the first time I have been able to both make breakfast and blog about it.

Last night I ask one of my lovely daughters what she wanted for breakfast this morning and she replied, "chocolate chip pancakes." I love chocolate in all its splendid glory and varieties (I've even used chocolate in a wonderful chicken recipe - Caribbean Chicken (see previous post), however, I've never really cared for them in pancakes. The gooey chocolate oozing out of the pancakes is wonderful for the first bite or two, but for me who is diabetic, more than a few bites is just too sweet.

Well, I was rummaging through my pantry last night and I came across some pumpkin pie filling, so I had an idea. If I'm going to please my girls, why not go all out. Instead of normal chocolate chip pancakes, why not pumpkin pie chocolate chip pancakes. So that is the recipe I start my morning with. Here goes:

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pancakes

adopted from a recipe from the Woolverton Inn, Stockton, NJ

Ingredients:

2 2/3 cups flour

Cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves to taste

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

8 eggs (separated)

2 1/2 cups buttermilk

1 1/2 cups pumpkin (1 15oz can)

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

1 stick of melted butter, slightly cooled

A aandful or two of Chocolate Chips

Directions:

Whisk together flour, spices, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.

With a hand mixer, whip egg whites until stiff but not dry.

Mix together buttermilk, pumpkin, sugar, vanilla and butter. Make a well in the dry ingredients and fold in buttermilk-pumpkin mixture; do not over mix.

Gently fold egg whites into batter.

Cook on a hot grill until bubbles form at the edges. Sprinkle a few chocolate chips onto the raw batter on the grill. Flip and cook 2 – 3 minutes more.

Cinnamon Sugar Compound Butter

1 lb unsalted butter

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 cup sugar or Splenda

5 drops Wild Orange Essential oil or orange extract

Whip Butter with Cinnamon, Sugar and a few drops Orange Oil.

Enjoy!