Chocolate Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Today's post is split into two parts. Read more to see the surprise recipe!

The Pancakes:
A.K.A. The best pancakes in the world! I can hear you all thinking it right now, "Chocolate AND chocolate chips? Hass, you have to be making everyone super fat with your recipes!" And my dear followers, I can assure you, I am not. I thought it might be a good idea to share with you guys the calorie counts for every recipe so you know EXACTLY how much you're eating. Calorie wise, if you eat one serving size of all my recipes, all the meals I make are usually around 500 calories. Sounds crazy, right? All my recipes look super fattening, right? I proudly admit to keeping my calorie counts low, however, if you view your health and diet more in terms of grams of fats and sodium and all that fancy stuff... my recipes are nowhere near healthy :) Of course in the next few weeks I'll be doing my best to make things as healthy as possible around here! But while I work out the kinks in my own and Mr. H's eating habits, bear with me.

If there's one thing neither Mr. H nor I can resist, it's breakfast for dinner. Pacakes, eggs, hashbrowns, turkey sausage, you name it - we love it at night! This may be due to the fact that we've been waking up at the early "crack of noon" lately, but alas, breakfast will always be a part of our day. A few weeks ago we bought a 10 pound bag of Complete Buttermilk Pancake Mix. You know, the "Just Add Water" kind? So for the last 2 weeks or so since we bought it, it's been sitting in the cabinet longing to be used. There's just one problem though... I think "Just Add Water" mixes are gross and quite honestly need a little help becoming the wonderful pancake I know they're capable of being. Mr. H worked a long day and I thought, "What better way to cheer him up than 2 of his favorite things? Chocolate and pancakes!"So I set out to make these delicious pancakes! Chocolate on chocolate... what could go wrong? The answer is nothing! Let's get to it!

So the first thing you're going to want to do is grab all of your dry ingredients and put them in a big bowl and stir it around a little bit. It should look something like this:

Once you've got everything in the bowl, add the wet ingredients. Now, I would have taken a picture of this step, but with the amount of milk I used, it flooded the bowl and you couldn't see any of the other ingredients. So use your imagination! After you've put all of your ingredients in the bowl, whisk it up and make sure you're grabbing all of your dry ingredients from the bottom of the bowl and incorporating them into the batter evenly. Sometimes I forget to really work down to the bottom and when I get down there I find a few pockets of flour and sugar that never got grabbed. If you accidentally do that, no worries! Just make sure you mix the little pocket into the rest of your wet batter and continue. Once you've got your batter, test it to make sure you've got the consistency that you want. If it's a bit too runny, add some more pancake mix. Make sure you don't add any more cocoa! Cocoa is quite bitter on it's own, and it might sound good to add more chocolate to the mix while still meeting your need to add more dry stuff, but it'll make your pancake taste a little chalky and burnt instead of airy and sweet. If it's too thick, add some more milk. No science, just eye ball it. After you've done that, add in your chocolate chips. If you've got any other chips you'd like to use, by all means try that! If I had them on hand, I think butterscotch chips or peanut butter chips would have gone VERY well in this batter.

At this point in time you have 2 options. You can use your batter now, or you can take the route I took and cover it to touch and let it rest for an hour in the fridge. It won't make a HUGE difference in texture, but I find that when I let batters rest at least for a little while it brings the flavors together a little more and it has a little time to thicken up just a touch more. Now, it's worth noting at this point that you could definitely put fruit chunks in this. I think raspberries and strawberry chunks would go great in this batter, but as always, I'd love to hear your suggestions! That being said, if you're going to use your batter right away, add the fruit in when you put in your chocolate chips. If you're going to let it rest, however, add the fruit RIGHT before you cook the pancakes. This allows the fruit to stay as fresh as possible, and then you don't run the risk of letting your fruit juices bleed into the pancake. This is a primarily chocolate pancake, so it would be really nice to have pops of different flavors, which is best achieved if you have 0 fruit juice in your batter.

Once your batter has rested, or you're just ready to use it, grab a ladle and have at it! Heat up a medium-large skillet and either grease it with a little bit of butter, or just some cooking spray. I like to take about 3/4 of a ladle full of batter for 1 pancake. This makes about a 3"- 4" pancake, which I think is the perfect size. Cook your pancakes until the sides seem to have puffed and rounded a bit and you see a few bubbles around the edges and you can easily slide your spatula under the pancake. Then flip them and cook until the other side is equally as brown.

This batch makes between 12-16 pancakes, so it's great for a family Sunday breakfast or dinner for 5-6. While you're cooking your pancakes, I like to line a baking dish with foil and pop it in a preheated 170 degree oven. When you've cooked a pancake, just open the oven and pop it into the baking dish to keep it warm while you finish cooking the rest of the pancakes. I find this helps a lot if you're doing a "self serve" type of meal where everyone grabs a plate and goes at it. That way when everyone gets their pancakes they're all the same warm yummy temperature. Enjoy!!

And now for the surprise recipe....

Homemade Syrup!

Now with these pancakes, if you're feeling a little adventurous, skip Aunt Jemima and stick with Hass! Make your own syrup! Unfortunately since I'm still relatively new to the food blogging thing and was super exhausted by the time I made dinner, I totally forgot to take pictures of me making the syrup! I promise it's not difficult though, as long as you can boil water :)

The first thing you'll want to do is measure out 2 cups of FIRMLY packed brown sugar (dark or light doesn't matter as long as it's brown. No sugar in the raw, though!) into a medium saucepan. Put this saucepan on a burner over medium heat and grab 1 cup of water and 1-3 tsp of vanilla extract, pour into the saucepan and bring to a boil. And the rest is cake! Make sure you stir the sugar every now and then and keep an eye on it. It will bubble and the bubbles might rise a bit on the edges, but this is completely normal and nothing to be worried about. This will probably make around 2-3 cups of syrup depending on how long you cook it. I cooked mine for a good 15 minutes since I started the syrup right around the time I started the pancakes. This made it a little thicker once it cooled, but if you like some runnier syrup, cook it for less time. Once you have your pancakes done, take the syrup off the heat and pour over your pancakes. Enjoy!

Doesn't that look just delicious? Try it out and let me know!


Calorie Count Pancakes per Serving (about 2-3): 355 Calories
Calorie Count Homemade Syrup per Serving (about 5-6 tablespoons): 285 Calories
Chocolate Pancake Ingredients:
3 cups complete pancake mix
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp vegetable oil
2 eggs
2 cups milk
Chocolate chips to taste

1.) Put your pancake mix, cocoa powder, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Whisk everything together until it's all one mixture.
2.) Add in your oil, eggs, and milk. Mix everything together until well blended. Fold in your chocolate chips. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
3.) Heat up a skillet with butter or cooking spray, pour out a generous amount of batter and let cook on one side until bubbles form around edges and the bottom is firm and dark. Flip pancake and finish cooking on the other side.

Homemade Syrup

2 cups Brown Sugar
1 cup Water
1-3 tsp Vanilla
1 pinch Cinnamon

1.) Put brown sugar into medium saucepan on medium heat
2.) Add water to sugar, stir around until completely distributed. Bring to a boil, continue stirring every minute or so. Cook for several minutes while your pancakes are cooking.
3.) Pour over pancakes, and enjoy!