"If you don't like it, you can eat..."

When I was a child, the ending to the above quote was "peanut butter and jelly."  We heard it quite often, when one of us complained about whatever my mom made for dinner.  I've found myself uttering the same statement way too often lately, though mine ends in "cereal."  We don't eat much peanut butter around here.  (No one is allergic or anything, it's just not a popular food.)

The latest time was this morning.  I thought I'd stir things up a bit, since I'm tired of our usual cornmeal pancakes.  In keeping with my recent chai spices kick, I decided that Gingerbread Pancakes might be fun.  After poking around on Recipezaar, I realized that it wouldn't be hard to doctor up my usual recipe (taken from my 20-year-old Betty Crocker cookbook).  I added some cinnamon, ground ginger, ground cloves and a bit of freshly grated nutmeg to the dry ingredients and added a tablespoon of molasses to the wet.  I combined the two, and discovered that I needed to add a little more milk, since the batter was way too thick.  I think next time I'll try reducing the cinnamon a bit, increasing the ginger, and adding a little more molasses to make them more gingerbread-y.

"I don't like brown pancakes!" were the first words out of Brianna's mouth when she saw them.  At my insistence, she nibbled on a small piece.  "Yuck!  I don't like them!"  (You can imagine the whiny five-year-old voice.)  

"Why don't you like them?"

"I just don't!"

"Well, then I guess you can just eat cereal."  

At least Gillian liked them.  =)  

Gingerbread Pancakes

1 cup (4.5 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp table salt

1 tbsp granulated sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1 cup milk

2 tbsp canola oil

1 egg

1 tbsp molasses

In medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients (flour through nutmeg).  In a separate bowl or liquid measuring cup (I use my 2-cup Pyrex measure), whisk together the wet ingredients (milk through molasses).  Add the liquid to the flour mixture and stir just until combined (do not overmix).  

For each pancake, ladle 3-4 tablespoons of batter onto a hot lightly greased griddle or skillet.  Cook until bubbles appear on the surface of each pancake and the edges start to look dry, about 3 minutes.  Flip the pancakes and cook until the bottoms are golden brown, an additional 3-4 minutes.  Serve hot.  Makes about a dozen 3-4 inch pancakes.