Someone made a comment last week on Kate’s Saucy Hot Dog post that I was like the nice angel on your shoulder and Kate was the naughty one. It’s true I’ve been posting mostly healthy recipes lately, but the two of us definitely trade off those roles (haha, I just wrote “rolls” and had to correct it) to keep a nice balance around here! This week, I’m the naughty angel on your shoulder. The kind that tells you it’s okay to eat dessert for breakfast. (Although to this naughty angel’s defense, these actually aren’t all that horrible for you if you can resist eating the entire batch.)
I posted on Facebook last week that I woke up with a recipe idea in my head and couldn’t do anything productive, like pack my completely not-packed house that I’m supposed to be moving in less than 2 weeks, until I made it. My favorite thing in the world is when I have a recipe idea that I can’t stop thinking about and when I make it, it turns out as good as I imagined it. This was one of those recipes.
about these pancakes
You guys know I love me some crazy pancakes. I wanted to incorporate the flavors of a pumpkin roll (ya know, a pumpkin sheet cake rolled up with cream cheesy frosting filling and sliced) into a breakfast appropriate pancake. So here we’ve got fluffy spiced pumpkin pancakes that get topped with a light and creamy cream-cheese-kissed whipped cream and drizzled in pure maple syrup. It feels naughty. It’s definitely delicious. And it’s completely acceptable to consume it before 9 am. Triple win.
making the pancakes!
First let’s mix up some dry ingredients. I use half all purpose flour and half whole wheat flour. Hearty whole wheat pairs really well with pumpkin, so I threw some in there, but feel free to use all regular all-purpose flour if you’d like. You’ll also add a little brown sugar for sweetness, and cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger. Plus a little baking soda and baking powder.
Whisk all of those together and make sure you get any lumps of brown sugar broken up.
In a separate bowl, mix up your wet ingredients. Buttermilk, eggs, vanilla, and just a couple tablespoons of oil.
And we can’t have pumpkin pancakes without pumpkin. As always, make sure you are using 100% pumpkin puree (click here to make your own) and not pumpkin pie filling.
Once that’s all mixed up, just combine your wet ingredients and your dry ingredients. I usually whisk at first and then use a rubber spatula to mix everything together. Avoid over mixing pancake batter so they stay light and fluffy.
Make sure your griddle pan is nice and hot (but not piping hot, you don’t want to burn the batter! Find a nice medium) and then use butter or nonstick spray to coat the pan. Drop batter by 1/4 cup onto the pan and cook until edges are set. Normally, I wait until I see little bubbles around the edges of pancake batter to know they’re ready to flip, but with these, usually the bubble stage is a tad too late. I flip them once I can see the edges are set and a spatula easily slides underneath.
Flip those and cook the remaining side.
For the topping, I wanted it to be cream-cheesy, like a pumpkin roll filling, but not as heavy and sweet as actual frosting (this is breakfast, after all!) So first, beat together a little cream cheese, vanilla, and powdered sugar until it’s smooth and creamy. To lighten the texture, beat in a little cream that’s been whipped, and then gently fold in more whipped cream.
Serve each pancake with a little dollop of the cream cheese topping and a drizzle of maple syrup. For everyday pancakes for my kids, I good ol’ Mrs. Butterworth’s (or whatever else happens to be on sale), but I always keep 100% pure maple syrup for recipes and special pancakes like this.
If you want to get wild and crazy, you can stack them like I did,
But know I do things like that for photographic impact! When I served these to my family, I just spooned a little dollop on top of a couple pancakes and topped with a reasonable amount of syrup. Okay, and then we consumed this ridiculous stack, but hey, someone had to eat it!
The spice in the pancakes, with the creamy sweetness of the cream cheese whipped cream and the warm flavor of maple is a dreamy combination. You know you want to pin this:
Pumpkin Roll Pancakes
Description
If you love pumpkin rolls with cream cheese filling, you’ll also love these pumpkin roll pancakes! Pumpkin spiced pancakes are layered with cream cheese whipped cream and drizzled with maple syrup! The perfect fall breakfast!
Ingredients
pancakes
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
3/4 teaspoons ground ginger
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 eggs
2/3 cup pumpkin puree
Cream Cheese Whipped Cream
4 ounces cream cheese (low fat is fine, but not fat free)
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup whipping cream (heavy or regular) whipped until medium peaks form
Real maple syrup for drizzling
Instructions
Prepare whipped cream by beating cream cheese, powdered sugar and vanilla until smooth and creamy. Take 1/2 of the whipped cream (that you already whipped) and beat it in until smooth. Add the rest of the whipped cream and use a spatula to gentlyfold in (do not beat). Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
Prepare pancakes. Whisk together flours, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Make sure to break up any clumps of brown sugar. In a separate bowl, whisk together buttermilk, vanilla, oil, eggs and pumpkin. Combine wet ingredients with dry and gently combine until mixed. Do not overmix.
Heat a nonstick griddle to medium heat. When hot, use butter or nonstick spray to coat the pan. Drop 1/4 cup pancake batter to form each pancake and cook until edges set (if you wait until they bubble, it might be just a bit too long). Flip pancakes and cook remaining side.
Serve warm pancakes with a dollop of cream cheese topping and a drizzle of maple syrup.
Can I use the Hungry Jack pancake mix and just add pumpkin and the spices? Will they turn out funny if I do? Thanks!!!!!!
Sorry, I have no idea 🙂
Loved these.
These were unbelievably amazingly wonderful!! Just WOW! A bit labor intensive with all the whipping and such, but perfect for a lazy fall weekend morning. And I froze the leftovers for a treat all week long!
I made these yesterday for my husband and my 37th wedding anniversary breakfast. They were very tasty. My only problem was my cream cheese mixture kind of melt and my pancakes slid around, didn’t stay in a nice stack like yours, but hey, they were fabulous. I was going to use the rest of my pumpkin in the current pumpkin bread recipe, but alas, it takes a full can. I’ll just make another batch of the pumpkin pancakes on Saturday.
I’m usually not a fan of pumpkin (no one stone me please) but these look heavenly and with cream cheese whipped cream… Ummmm yes please. Too bad the hubs is dieting and I KNOW he wouldn’t be able to just eat one.
They look delicious. I love, love Pumpkin rolls and bars. But guess I can’t imagine eating this for breakfast. I would love a big plate to share with others for dessert in a nano!
Pumpkin pancakes are the BEST. But you have to try them with buttermilk syrup instead of the maple sometime. We call it “magic sauce” at our house. Sooooooo good!
So, this has been my favorite breakfast since I first tried them a few months ago. Anytime of year. In fact, I would eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I recently had some leftover cream cheesy delicious filling for these pancakes and spread it on waffles with some fresh berries. Not quite as good as with pumpkin pancakes, but definitely the next best thing.
I have a similar pancake recipe. It’s awfully great as well. Another suggestion is to top your pancakes, even with the cream cheese concoction, with some chopped pecans and then drizzle it with warm maple syrup.
WOW! These are amazing. I was trying to use up all my frozen pumkin and I came across your recipe. Health and ooh so good! I keep making double batches for the kid breakfasts for the week but they don’t seem to make it through the day. We eat them for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks!
I’ve made this great recipe a couple of times already. Once was as a breakfast for dinner with friends over- they loved them too. And I’ve made them as waffles. Sooooo good! Thanks 😉
I love this recipe!!! I am and woke up early to surprise my family with this amazing treat and everybody loved it!!!! Thank you so much for this recipe 🙂 Perfect thanksgiving treat.
These were incredible. Seriously delicious!! My kids inhaled them, my husband is not even home from work yet so I made them set aside atleast three. Temptation sitting on the table I tell you! Thank you. And p.s. your pumpkin chocolate chip bread is addicting….
These look so yummy! Thanks for the recipe….
I saw these on Pinterest and made them for a brunch I hosted last Sunday. They were a GINORMOUS hit. Like, huge. My father-in-law asked me to make them “at least one morning” over our Thanksgiving weekend up at their cabin 🙂 Thank you for such a fantastic recipe, it’s going in our family binder for sure!!!
these were delicious! I made some pumpkin cinnamon rolls (smitten kitchen) last weekend then used the rest of the pumpkin with these pancakes. I think I preferred the pancakes, because of all the yummy spices (yay for cloves!) that you include. thanks for a great recipe.
I’ve been making your recipes for about a year and I thought I should stop and say, “Hi.” And “I love you!” :). Thank you for restoring joy in the kitchen. Your recipes and your blog are beautiful. I’m currently kicked back and digesting pumpkin goodness!! The same goodness my girls said they wouldn’t touch. They are happily digesting now too! Thank you!!
Those pumpkin roll pancakes look really good! I have really been into the pumpkin pancakes these last few weeks!
My friend next door made these and brought a couple over to me to try–heaven! Loved them, loved her for bringing me some, loved you for sharing the recipe. That’s a lot of love, all inspired by these pancakes!
Made these pancakes the other day for breakfast. They were delicious:)
I made these this morning and they were AMAZING! So, so good! My husband had eight 🙂 and talked about how good they were again at lunch. Thanks for the great recipe!
I have died and gone to heaven and so has my family. Sara, you are truly inspired! These àre DIVINE! I made these on Wednesday night for dinner (I just couldn’t wait until breakfast) and all 6 kids loved them! That right there is a miracle with some picky eaters in the family. I’m excited to try your apple cider syrup on these. Do you by chance have a maple syrup recipe too? Maple syrup is expensive and I’d like to be able to make my own. Kate and Sara, you guys are the best!!!
So great! I kinda cheated and used Krusteaz buttermilk pancake mix for most of the dry ingredients, but kept everything else the same, and they still turned out! Also, I poured them into pumpkin shapes for a little extra festive-ness. Thanks for sharing your great ideas!
I agree! Dreaming up a recipe that then turns out as good as you thought or better is the best! These look awesome! PS: I always catch myself spelling words the cooking/baking way (flour instead of flower, etc.)! I guess I just always have food on the brain!
These were DELISH! THANK YOU! P.S. Are you on Instagram? I would love to follow you there too. 🙂
We’re not on Instagram..I guess we’re just a little behind the times 😉
Wow! This looks so good!
These are fantastic! Although I have to admit that I omitted the baking soda and substituted regular milk. They turned out great. I have to say that your picture at the end is amazing!!!! You gals do great work!
I’m in love. I’m absolutely in love. This would be my last meal. XOXO
My mother in law makes a super yummy spiced apple cider syrup that would be heavenly on these!
We have apple cider syrup in our cook book, and you’re right- that WOULD be amazing!
These were delicious!!!! My new favorite! These were great with your Buttermilk Carmel Syrup!!