Pancakes are so much fun because 1) there’s virtually no screwing them up 2) you can customize them to taste and look like just about anything your little heart desires.

One morning I woke up and felt like doing two things – eating some chocolate for breakfast (not something I recommend often, but a craving is a craving) and establishing culinary racial harmony. In fairness, I’m no hero, I really just felt like the chocolate, but then thought it would be fun to do chocolate chip vanilla pancakes on one side, and some chocolatey pancakes on the other

For the chocolatey pancakes, I cheated a bit and just added some fancy hot chocolate mix to Sweetstacks batter – they were light, fluffy, chocolatey, and delicious.

For the second, I took my favorite vanilla pancake recipe, which makes simultaneously weighty and fluffy pancakes (don’t ask me how… actually, you can, it’s probably the abundance of creams and baking powder) and added Ghirardelli chocolate chips to the batter. Again, not something that I would recommend on a regular basis, but when nothing but chocolate will do, either of these options will satisfy an early Saturday morning craving.

One note – every pancake recipe I have suggests mixing the dry ingredients separately from the wet, but I personally don’t like an extra dish to wash, have experimented with combining in the same bowl, and found the results to be just as delicious as when they’re kept separate.

Enjoy!

Click here for a printable version of the recipe

Chocolate Chip Pancakes, Yields 8

Prep Time: 25 Minutes
Total Prep Time: 25 Minutes

Ingredients:

1 Cup Flour
2 Tbls. Sugar
1 1/2 Tsp. Baking Powder
1 Tsp. Salt
½ Cup Crème Fraiche or Sour Cream
½ Cup Milk
2 Eggs
1 Tsp. Vanilla
1 Cup Chocolate Chips
Butter for frying

Preparation:

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, and baking powder. Mix in the salt, crème fraiche, milk, eggs, and vanilla until the batter is even and all dry ingredients incorporated into the wet.

Melt ½ Tbls. of butter in a frying pan over medium heat. Once melted, pour the batter onto the frying pan – the trick to even-ish circular pancakes is to pour the batter into the same spot. It spreads out much more evenly than if you try to pour in a circle.

Once you start to see little air bubbles around the sides and on the top (after 2-3 minutes), turn the heat down a degree or two, flip your pancakes, and cook for another 1-2 minutes. Continue with the rest of the batter, remembering to turn the heat back up to medium for the first side.

Drown in maple syrup and enjoy!