Regular pancakes are good.  Warm and soft, with butter and syrup.  Yum!  But what happens when you toss in some chocolate chips?  It becomes sinfully delicious.  How about a few blueberries or bananas?  A delicious fruity surprise.  Add some bits of apple and you have an amazing fall morning treat.

I’m sure we all can agree that adding something extra to pancakes can really make them that much more delicious, but is there a right way? 

Have you ever added some chocolate chips only to be left with burnt chocolate stuck to the pan and a less than desirable mess of a pancake?

So how to you add ingredients correctly? 

How to correctly add ingredients to pancakes depends on what type of ingredients you are adding.  There are 3 basic types of ingredients you can add:

1.  Potentially messy ingredients 

This would include chocolate chips and it’s variations as well as peanut butter, jam, and other ingredients similar to these.  They are messy because when you add them to the pancakes, they may melt or smear on the pancakes and the pan.

2.  Plain, easy ingredients 

There are those few ingredients that are very easy to add to pancakes, such as nuts and raisins.  They don’t make a mess on the pancake or the pan.  These ingredients are perfect to add something new without the worry.

3.  Fruit 

The final ingredient is fruit.  Fruit can be messy, too, but the hard part about adding fruit is the possible disfiguring it can encounter.  Adding it too the batter and mixing it might cause it to get bruised and damaged.  There are some special precautions to make with fruit.

How to add:  1.  Potentially messy ingredients 

The potentially messy ingredients can be added directly to the batter or on the pan.  Make sure you don’t add too much.  For example, if you are adding chocolate chips, add about 1 Tbsp. worth of chips for each pancake.  If you are adding it to the batter, make it about ½ cup to 1 cup per batch.

When adding it to the batter, you surround the chips with batter which should act as a barrier to the pan, avoiding burnt chocolate.  A better way to do it is to sprinkle the chips onto each pancake, and then pour a little more batter over the chips.  Either way, don’t let the chips touch the pan by themselves.

2.  Plain, easy ingredients 

I call these easy ingredients because they are.  You can add them to the batter, or sprinkle on the pan.  Either way, you shouldn’t have any problems with them.

3.  Fruit 

Fruit can be tricky.  Similar to the messy ingredients, if they touch the pan, they might stick and leave a mess.  Ingredients like apples can easily be added to the batter and stirred in without trouble. 

On the other hand, ingredients like blueberries and bananas, might get damaged or bruised when stirring in the batter.  In this case, you might want to add them to the pancakes and cover them with batter, the same as the messy ingredients.

The best way to add any type of ingredient is by trial and error.  If you aren’t sure what to do, try adding the ingredients to ¼ cups of batter and stirring it before you add to the pan.  If this doesn’t work, try the next one by sprinkling it on the pancake and not adding batter, or add the extra batter.

Each recipe makes several pancakes which make it easy to experiment.  Try different things and figure out what works best for you!

Here is a list of possible ingredients you can add:

Chocolate chips or other chips (peanut butter, white, caramel, raspberry, etc.)

Swirled peanut butter

Nuts (any type you would like)

Raisins (with cinnamon) 

Banana slices

Strawberry slices

Any berries (blueberries, boysenberries, etc.)

Apple pieces

Caramel sauce

Be creative!

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