mixing it up (apple pancakes with cinnamon butter)

As much as I love a good, fluffy pancake, sometimes it’s good to mix it up, you know? Especially when there’s somehow all these extra apples laying around. (Who didn’t eat their daily apple this week? I’m blaming Dave.) And I think most of us know where to look when we want to “mix it up” – epicurious.com is a cornucopia of recipes that have been fancied up somehow. So how about apple pancakes with cinnamon butter?

This isn’t the big, puffy German apple pancake that’s basically a Dutch pancake with apple topping. These are more like regular pancakes with apples in them, which is just what I was hoping for. Like any good epicurious reader, I didn’t follow the recipe exactly.

The apples are shredded, and although I’m often too lazy to carry my food processor around my kitchen (I can’t store it on the counter in my tiny kitchen), I hate shredding non-cheese things with my cheese grater because I always ends up with bloody knuckles.

While the batter set for 30 minutes, I put together the cinnamon butter. This sounded innocent enough, until I realized that I was basically making frosting. Gotta love cinnamon frosting on a Saturday morning!

The pancakes were really good, and a nice change from the normal routine. I ended up with quite a bit of extra cinnamon butter, which went wonderfully on the cinnamon muffins I baked the next morning.

Apple Pancakes with Cinnamon Butter (from epicurious.com)

Serves 4

I didn’t have and therefore skipped the orange and lemon peels. I substituted Empire apples for Granny Smith and low-fat milk for whole milk. Just working with what I had.

Cinnamon butter
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
½ cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon grated orange peel

Pancakes
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
2 medium Granny Smith apples (scant 1 pound), peeled, halved, cored

1 2/3 cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons (packed) golden brown sugar
2½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup whole milk
2 large eggs
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted, divided

For cinnamon butter:
Using electric mixer, beat all ingredients in small bowl until blended.

For pancakes:
Combine lemon juice and peel in bowl. Coarsely grate apples into bowl, tossing to coat with juice.

Whisk flour, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt in large bowl. Make well in center of dry ingredients. Whisk in milk, eggs, and 1/4 cup melted butter until smooth. Stir in apple mixture. Cover and let batter stand at room temperature at least 30 minutes and up to 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 250°F. Place baking sheet in oven. Heat heavy large nonstick griddle or skillet over medium-high heat 1 minute. Brush griddle with some of remaining 1/4 cup melted butter. For each pancake, drop 1 heaping tablespoon batter onto griddle, spacing pancakes apart. Cook until golden on bottom and bubbles start to form on surface, about 3 minutes. Turn pancakes over. Cook until golden on bottom, about 2 minutes longer. Transfer pancakes to baking sheet in oven to keep warm. Repeat with remaining batter, brushing griddle with butter before each batch of pancakes.

Arrange pancakes on plates. Top each with dollop of cinnamon butter and serve.