Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

Happy Valentine's Day!  

These pancakes were a hit with all of my kids even though they didn't have maple syrup (not usually acceptable around here)! I did kinda feel like I was putting several cinnamon rolls on my plate at once! Pig out - it's Valentine's Day! And, look, even the newspaper carrier was in the spirit today:

Hilarious!

Anyway, you use a squirt bottle like the kind ketchup and mustard come in at some restaurants to make the cinnamon swirl. (Note: I saw something else recently that suggested using a ziploc bag with the corner cut off. Brilliant! But either way will work).

I've modified this recipe a bit from the original. The recipe I used called for using melted butter, which may taste yummy, but little chunks that solidified kept clogging up my squirter, resulting in big blobs of the cinnamon batter like this:

Nice, huh? Don't worry, they still tasted good! I tried cutting a bigger opening, but that didn't work. So I tried keeping the batter warm in a pot of warm water, but I didn't want to actually cook the batter in the bottle and it didn't really work for me.

So, I've changed the recipe to use oil instead, along with a few other changes.

Cinnamon Roll Pancakes
2 c. white flour
1 c. wheat flour
2 T. sugar
1 T. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 1/2 c. milk
2 eggs
4 T. oil
Cinnamon

Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the wet ingredients; add to the dry and stir to combine. Pour about 1 c. batter into another bowl and add a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon, until it's a nice dark color. Pour the cinnamon batter into the squirt bottle.

Heat the skillet to a little lower temperature than you would normally use so that the pancakes will be mostly cooked through before you flip them. (That way the cinnamon design won't get too browned to see well). Pour plain batter onto the skillet and immediately swirl with the cinnamon batter. Let cook until golden on the bottom, then flip and cook the other side.

For the glaze, I like to use 1 T. butter to make it taste a little better. Add about a cup of powdered sugar, 1 tsp. vanilla and 1 T. milk. Mix together well, adding more milk or powdered sugar until it's the consistency you want. Serve over pancakes.

Recipe adapted from livingthecountrylife.com