Pumpkin Spice Pancakes

The weather is cool, pumpkins are stacked high outside the grocery stores and when I came across these over at Annie's Eats I thought they sounded like a perfect Saturday morning treat.  I've tried a pumpkin pancake recipe before and thought they were okay but these were delicious; thick and moist with subtle pumpkin and spice flavors.  We went simple and adorned these in generous amounts of butter, cinnamon sugar and fresh cinnamon whipped cream.  

Pumpkin Spice Pancakes

Annie's Eats blog

Ingredients:
1¼ cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
¾ tsp. ground cinnamon
¼ tsp. ground nutmeg
Dash of ground ginger
Dash of ground cloves
1 cup milk
½ cup pumpkin puree
1 large egg
2 tbsp. vegetable oil or melted butter

Directions:
In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt and spices and stir with a fork to combine.  Mix together the milk, pumpkin puree, egg and oil or butter in a liquid measuring cup.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and whisk together just until combine.  (The batter may still have a few lumps - that is okay.)

Preheat the oven to 200° F.  Have an oven safe plate or serving dish ready.  Heat a greased skillet or griddle over medium heat.  Once the skillet is hot, add a 1/3 cup scoop of batter to the pan.  Let cool until bubbles begin to form on the top surface.  Carefully flip with a spatula and cook the second side until golden brown, a couple minutes more.  Transfer the cooked pancake to the oven safe dish, and place in the oven to keep warm.  Repeat with the rest of the batter until it has all been cooked, regreasing the pan as needed.  Serve with cinnamon sugar, maple syrup, and/or whipped cream.    

Breakfast Strata

This has become our traditional Conference Sunday meal.  ( Twice a year the prophet and leaders of the LDS church broadcast their sermons worldwide and we stay home to hear and be inspired.)  We make this hearty strata and a blender full of scrumptious banana milk in the morning and pretty much just munch on it through dinner time.  We pair this with icy cold banana milk (recipe below.)

Sausage and Cheddar Cheese Strata
Bride & Groom Cookbook

1 1/2 lbs breakfast sausage (we like to use maple and sometimes I only bother buying 1lb and it still works fine)
4 eggs, beaten
2 1/2 cups half & half
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
6 slices Texas Toast (removing crust is optional; sometimes I do, sometimes I don't)
2 cups cheddar cheese, grated
* if using regular sausage, then throw in 2 tbs chives or green onions.  I don't add this when using maple sausage because I just don't think the flavors compliment each other.

Preheat oven to 350.
Butter a 9x13x2 casserole dish.
Heat a large skillet on medium heat and cook sausage until thoroughly browned.  Using a slotted spoon, transfer the sausage to a paper towel lined plate to drain.
Whisk together the eggs, half & half, salt and pepper.  Layer the bread in the prepared dish two across, 3 down.  Spoon the sausage evenly over the top of the bread and then pour egg mixture over top.  Top with the cheese.
Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes.  Remove foil and bake another 10 minutes.  Remove from oven and let cool 15 to 20 minutes.  I know impatience usually kicks in for us at this point and we really just want to eat it straight out of the oven, but I promise that waiting the extra 15 minutes is important.

Icy Cold Banana Milk

Icy-Cold Banana Milk
Bride & Groom Cookbook

2 cups milk
2 ripe bananas
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract


Throw it all in the blender and blend until smooth.  It will be quite frothy so we like to make this about 30 minutes ahead of serving so that the froth dissapears and to let it chill nicely.  We also tend to just wing this one at this point adding as much of each ingredient as we think tastes best; we also like to make a lot of it because it's a perfect compliment to the strata and it goes fast between us and the kids!

Broccoli Salad

Made this over the summer for a family barbeque at the lake and we all loved it!  Even the boys who were originally skeptical over the virtues of a salad consisting mainly of broccoli.  So yummy.

Broccoli Salad
adapted from Food.com

Ingredients

• 1 -2 head fresh broccoli ( do not use frozen!)
• 1/2 cup red onions, chopped
• 1/2 lb bacon
• 2 1/2 tablespoons vinegar
• 1 cup Hellmann's mayonnaise
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cups grated cheesehandfull of sunflower seedssprinkle of cayenne pepper

Directions

1. Cook bacon (I make it easy and buy the pre-ccoked, pre-crumbled Hormel brand in  bag by the salad dressing isle; the Hormel brand is the best) and crumble into pieces.
2. Chop up top of broccoli into bite size pieces.
3. Mix broccoli, onions, bacon, sunflower seeds, and cheese in large bowl.
4. In separate bowl combine vinegar, sugar, cayenne and mayo.
5. Pour over broccoli mixture and toss to coat and refrigerate. 
6. Best if made a day ahead.