Pintesting in the Kitchen - Cream Cheese Pancakes

Most nights I hit up Pintrest for diabetic-friendly recipes now. Planning ahead seems like the most likely way that I have a chance of eating anything.

If I wanted a bagel for breakfast I'd have to only 1/4 of it and my toppings would also end up limited. That's no fun for a girl who considers bagels a vehicle for cream cheese. I take cream cheese somewhat seriously - as a child I snacked on UTZ potato chips and cream cheese (much to the horror of my parents, especially my health conscious mother.)

I needed an actual breakfast food to enjoy in the morning instead of just some random recipe that would do the job.

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the information found here.

Yield: Four 6-inch pancakes

Serving Size: 1 pancake

Ingredients

• 2 oz cream cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 packet stevia (or any) sweetener
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

If you're uncertain of how to tell if you have 2 ounces of cream cheese, I refer you to the size of the packet where, as I'd never bothered to notice before, there are markers telling you each ounce.

I don't have any stevia so I used 1 tbsp of raw, organic honey.

Instructions

Put all ingredients in a blender or magic bullet.

 As it turns out my mother gave me hers on my last visit home and I hadn't used it yet

Blend until smooth. Let rest for 2 minutes so the bubbles can settle. 

Pour 1/4 of the batter into a hot pan greased with butter or pam spray. Cook for 2 minutes until golden, flip and cook 1 minute on the other side. Repeat with the rest of the batter.

 I took a bite of these with no syrup and they tasted a little like dirt.

Serve with sugar free syrup (or any syrup of your choice) and fresh berries. I didn't have free syrup but I was almost certain the night before I read that generally, a serving size of syrup was a tablespoon so I put about a tablespoon on.

Bingo! It was now edible.

Notes

Approx nutrition info per batch: 344 calories, 29g fat, 2.5g net carbs, 17g protein

Another great way to save on calories and sugar is to try to eat this in front of your toddler - you won't be eating the entire thing by yourself anymore.

Breakfast Using My Home-made Butter

I now had a quart of buttermilk and no plans for it.

I also had a lot more whole milk than planned as well.

 Pancakes seemed like a great way to use them. Usually my husband is the pancake maker in the house (there's a whole story behind that but I'll leave that for another day) but he uses mix from a box.

I searched the internet for a recipe that I thought sounded delicious and decadent that would make good use of the buttermilk, whole milk, and butter.

Having recently purchased some particularly wonderful bacon it seemed this breakfast may have been meant to be.

The only thing I could think to improve upon making special pancakes for the hubs was to add blueberries. Unfortunately these weren't fresh frozen so the result was mostly tasteless blueberries.

The pancakes were topped with some of the syrup of Vermont local my mother knows, regularly brings back from her trips home for her friends.

The recipe calls for you to keep your wet ingredients separate from your dry until you're ready to cook.

Be careful not to over mix your batter. Mix until your streaks of flour disappear.You better bet your butt I used organic flour ;p

 If it's a little lumpy that's okay. Mixing until you get a super smooth batter causes a chemical reaction between the acid in the buttermilk and the base of the baking soda. Over mixing or stirring causes will activate the gluten in your flour, leaving you with a tougher, more rubbery pancake - and nobody wants that (except maybe the dog.)

I ended up chickening out at the last moment and making my husband cook them on the stove while I watched. I would have felt terrible if I completely ruined breakfast. This recipe makes a very serious stack of pancakes.

At long last we had breakfast. It was delicious, but that organic bacon was actually so good that it out-shined the pancakes!