' As those of you who follow the sporadic posting here on Chef Lisa, you’ll know Matt is a homebrewer. As such, we always (or almost always) have beer of some kind around the house, and I enjoy finding things to use it in. One recipe I’ve found was Spiced Dark Craft Beer Pancakes. I found the recipe at CraftBeer.com, and made it a couple days ago for breakfast. I made a double batch, hoping to have a bunch for leftovers to put in the freezer, but I think we ended up with just three or four pancakes left.
This recipe made a very thin batter, which in turn created very thin pancakes. Which isn’t a problem, though it is different from what I normally make (we’re into thick, fluffy ones). Regardless of our preferred type of pancake, these were delicious. I made a slight change to the original recipe. It called for orange peel, but I couldn’t find the bottle of dried Valencia orange peel I know I have in my spices. Instead, I used the zest of a blood orange, because that’s what I had (and my family adores blood oranges).
One thing that should be noted is that my pancakes turned out a lot darker looking than the picture on the original recipe. Either they used a not quite so dark beer, or they used a generic pancakes picture.
Spiced Dark Craft Beer Pancakes
1 cup sifted all purpose flour
¼ granulated sugar
¾ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 egg
1 cup beer
2 tbsp melted butter
½ tsp cinnamon
1 tsp orange zest
In a large bowl, combine all dry ingredients and spices. Add all the wet ingredients to the dry and whisk until combined. It’s okay if there are lumps – over mixing will make bad pancakes.
Heat skillet or griddle on medium, and coat with butter pan spray. Add batter in ¼ cups and wait for bubbles to form, flip and cook until golden brown.
Serve with some additional orange peel, butter and pure maple syrup.
The kids liked it, and both Matt and I agreed that it’s worth experimenting a bit with to perfect the flavors. 