Carrot Cake Pancakes

Carrot cake pancakes are the perfect easy Easter morning breakfast or easter brunch.  All the fabulous flavor of carrot cake in sweet carrot and spice pancakes.

I seem to be on a pancake kick, because when I came up with the idea for carrot cake pancakes, I couldn't shake it until I had created it.

I'm sure thousands upon thousands of people have come up with this idea before I did, but rather than go looking for a recipe to adapt, I just turned to our family favorite plain pancake recipe and started improvising based on our favorite carrot cake recipes, until I had created a light, fluffy, carrot-filled pancake with just the right amount of sweetness and carrot cake spices.  These tasty pancakes have all the fabulous flavor of a piece of carrot cake.

They could easily just be called carrot pancakes, but I decided to call them "carrot cake pancakes" and the kids went nuts for them.  It's all in the presentation.

Carrot Cake Pancake Recipe

• 3 Cups grated fresh carrots

• 2 Tablespoons butter

• 1 cup sugar (brown sugar is also delicious in this recipe if you prefer)

• 2 teaspoons salt

• 2 teaspoons cinnamon

• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

• 2 Tablespoons baking powder

• 3 cups all purpose flour

• 2 1/2 cups milk

• 2 Tablespoons oil

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Start by grating your fresh carrots.  I buy lots of carrots at once, then shred them with my Cuisinart food processor, and freeze them in 3 cup increments.  (It's not coincidence that I package my carrots in the amount needed to make my very favorite carrot cake recipe.)  So to make things easy, I created this carrot cake pancake recipe to work with 3 cups of grated carrots, too.

My first attempt at these pancakes resulted in pancakes with rather crunchy carrots inside.  Pancakes cook so quickly that the carrots weren't getting soft enough if I put them in raw, so I decided to saute the carrots with two tablespoons of butter before adding them to the batter.  Cook the carrots for about five minutes over medium heat, until the carrots are soft.

In a large bowl, combine the cooked carrots with the beaten eggs, oil, and milk.  In a separate bowl, stir together the dry ingredients and combine them with the wet ingredients to make a thick batter.

How to Cook Carrot Cake Pancakes:

• These pancakes, since they have more sugar than standard pancakes, need to be cooked a little bit cooler than a standard pancake recipe, at around 300 degrees rather than 350.  You don't want a hot skillet--more of a medium-hot one.
• Measure out 1/4 of batter for each pancake, and cook on a griddle or large nonstick skillet until the pancakes are a golden brown color, just as you would cook normal pancakes

I like them best just topped with butter.  The slight sweetness of the pancake is plenty for me.  

But a sprinkling of powdered sugar certainly wasn't objectionable.

And the addition of some toasted pecans on top of the pancakes was very nice indeed.   Pure maple syrup would also taste phenomenal on these fluffy pancakes.

If you have a serious sweet tooth, try making a thinned cream cheese frosting to drizzle on top like syrup!   Ooh, maybe try thinning the cream cheese icing with maple syrup to make maple-cream cheese drizzle!

I wouldn't exactly call this a healthy pancake recipe, but it does at least have more vegetables in it than your traditional pancake.  This is definitely going to be fueling our early morning Easter egg hunt in a few weeks! 

Printable Carrot Cake Pancakes Recipe:

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