Pumpkin Spiced Pancakes

Think pancakes. Think pumpkin spice. Think breakfast. Put them all together and what do you get? That’s right: Pumpkin Spiced Pancakes, a truly indulgent breakfast that matches up your favorite spice mix with your favorite way to start the day. You can serve them sweet or salty, or mix both together on the plate with bacon and maple syrup (like I did here). Best of all, they’re super-easy to make.

How to Make Pumpkin Spice Pancakes

The basic pancake mix is the same as for any American pancakes: eggs, milk, self-raising flour. What we’re adding in to make these pancakes different are the spices and the pumpkin purée. You can make your own pumpkin purée if you like, just by mashing cooked pumpkin. Or get it out of a can. But if you’re using store-bought, just make sure it’s unsweetened.

And if you already have a ready-made pumpkin spice blend, you can use that. But I prefer to make my own, so I hit my own perfect mix of aromatics to gingery heat. Feel free to change the ratios of the spices below to your own taste.

The Dry Ingredients

Simply mix them all together in a mixing bowl. It’s better to do this separately from the wet ingredients, to ensure an even distribution of sugar and spice throughout the pancake batter. One other note – I used self-raising flour, because that’s what I happened to have in the pantry. But you can easily turn all-purpose flour into self-raising by adding baking powder. For this recipe, you can substitute 1 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour with about 1 tsp of baking powder added to it.

The Wet Ingredients

Whisk everything together in a bowl or jug, breaking up the pumpkin purée as much as you can. You won’t get it perfectly smooth, but that’s fine. At this stage, you can hit pause if you like, while you’re waiting for everyone to get out of bed and be ready for breakfast. As long as you keep the wet and dry ingredients separate from each other, the baking powder will not activate and you can wait for a few hours or more, if need be.

But as soon as you combine them, the pancake batter needs to be used up before you lose all the bubbles from the raising agent.

Frying Pumpkin Spiced Pancakes

If you’ve ever made pancakes before, the method for these is no different. Simply heat up the oil, and drop dollops of batter into the hot pan, letting them spread out into pancakes. But if it’s new for you, not to worry! It’s incredibly easy. Here’s the step by step guide:

1. Whisk up the dry and wet ingredients together. You can use a blender if you like, but just a hand whisk is fine. Make sure there are no lumps of dry flour remaining, but the mix doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth and uniform.
2. Heat the oil over medium-high heat, using a non-stick pan. Wait until the oil is hot before adding the batter.
3. Add dollops of about 2-3 tablespoons. I find it easiest to pour it from a jug, but you could scoop it out with a 1/8 cup measure if you prefer, especially if you want to make sure each pancake is identically sized.
4. Fry until you see bubbles appear on top of the pancakes. This should take 1-2 minutes maximum – any longer, and your pan probably isn’t hot enough.
5. Flip the pancakes over with a spatula and fry for another minute or so on the reverse side, until golden brown.
6. Keep the pancakes in a warm place while you repeat with the rest of the batter. That’s it! Super-easy!

What to Serve With Pumpkin Spiced Pancakes

I especially love breakfasts that strike a balance between sweet and savory, so I decided to lean into that here. I topped my pancakes with roasted pumpkin and crispy fried bacon and maple syrup. But honestly, you could use whatever you like. Go fully sweet with whipped cream and berries, or salt it up more with sausage and eggs on the side. Both will taste good.

And More…

Looking for more breakfast and brunch recipes? Try one of these:

• Scrambled Eggs with Sour Cream
• Caramelized Apple and Fig Oatmeal
• Papaya Banana Smoothie with Peanut Butter
• Cranberry Banana Oatmeal Pancakes
• Crispy Hash Browns

Conclusion

Warming spices are great as the weather gets colder, and pumpkin spice may just be my favorite of all. I just love that balance of aromatics with the spicy ginger. Plus of course the way it goes so well with both sweet and savory things. What did you choose to put on your Pumpkin Spiced Pancakes? Let me know in the comments!