M&M Pancakes

With Valentine’s Day coming up I’m in the mood to do some cooking that is tied into the day of love. Hubby and I never celebrate Valentine’s Day, it’s just too gimmicky for me and I don’t need a designated day to let him know that I love him. I do like to make a nice dinner if we’re home and now that we have kids we buy them some Valentine’s treats because I can’t stop spoiling them. I picked up a bag of Valentine’s M&M’s with the plan to make M&M pancakes. It was going to be a few days before I made them until Hubby found out about my plan. This changed our dinner for the night to make them then, it’s easy enough so I agreed to make him happy. If you haven’t had them before they’re really yummy and kids (the big ones also) get excited about them. We served them with our normal butter and maple syrup and my boy pouted while he had to wait for more to finish cooking, it’s a hard life for him.

M&M Pancakes

GF Pancake Batter (I use Gluten Free Mama’s)*
M&M’s, several handfuls
Butter
Maple Syrup

Pour the pancake batter on a hot skillet. If I had planned ahead I would have made heart shaped pancakes, you can put the batter in a large Ziploc bag, cut the corner and pipe a heart shape on the skillet with the batter. Top the batter with M&M’s. Flip when the bottom is lightly browned and the top is starting to bubble a bit. Serve with butter and maple syrup though peanut butter would be delicious on top also.

*I like to let my batter sit for a minimum of 5 min and up to 30 min, it makes the pancakes fluff when they bake.

Potato Pancakes Naturally Gluten Free

This past weekend we had a wonderful dinner of steak, corn on the cob, cucumber salad, and Gorgonzola mashed potatoes. Yum and all naturally gluten free! The mashed potatoes are a favorite of Hubby’s, a restaurant we used to go to had these for a long time and he fell in love. I don’t really have a recipe for them, just make mashed potatoes like usual with some milk and butter added while you’re whipping them and then add about ½ C of Gorgonzola cheese whipping it really well. Taste test to see if you want more added before serving these yummy taters. We had a lot of these left over and I wanted an easy dinner so I decided to make Potato Pancakes, you can’t go wrong with these.

Potato Pancakes
Adapted from AllRecipes

2 C mashed potatoes
1 egg beaten
¼ C shredded cheese - for dairy free use Daiya
5 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
¼ C copped green onion

Preheat your griddle to about 400 F. In a bowl combine the potatoes, egg, cheese, bacon, and onion. Drop on the griddle and flatten to ½ inch thick. Fry until brown then flip and fry on the other side. My potatoes weren't very thick, they were more on the runny side, so I had to fry them for quite awhile before I could flip them. I had a lot of ugly potatoe pancakes from them not being fried enough but if your potatoes are thick you won't need to fry them for quite as long.

We like these as they are and don’t add a thing to them.

Raspberry Pancakes & Maple Syrup

Our raspberry plants finally produced fruit this year and we have done a few picks so far. I’m surprised I wound up with any because my boy kept eating what I was picking. Thankfully he filled up and I had some left over. We love to use raspberries in pancakes, the tart and sweet flavors mix wonderfully and hubby requested that be our dinner after the first pick.

I’ve tried a lot of pancake recipes and by far these are the best. I use Gluten Free Mama’s Pancake Mix and I just don’t think there’s a better option out there. The texture and flavor are superb and I don’t think a gluten eater could tell the difference. Follow the directions on the back then add the raspberries to your batter and let it sit for about 5 minutes before cooking on your griddle. Add some homemade maple syrup and you’ll be in heaven.

Maple Syrup

I stick with the basic maple syrup recipe because it just works and we all love it. I also tend to triple the recipe so I’m not making syrup so often, just store it in a sealed container in the refrigerator.

2 C raw sugar
1 C water
1 t maple flavoring

Bring the water to a boil and add the sugar stirring constantly until it dissolves. Bring the mixture to a boil again, stirring occasionally, then remove from heat and add the maple flavoring. Pour into your container and serve hot!