Thanksgiving Day Pancake Breakfast!

Every year my husband and I switch off families. When we eat with his family, we drive a few hours to Albany and get there around noon and eat in the middle of the afternoon. When it is my family, we only drive 10 minutes down the road and we eat around 5 pm.

So on the years when it is my family, we eat a bigger breakfast, then just a little mid-day snack and then a BIG dinner! This happens to be my year. Two years ago we went to i-Hop for pancakes since they had a gingerbread pancake I wanted to try and something else that my husband wanted to try for their special holiday pancakes.

This year we decided to budget and make our own pancakes at home since 1) we are just trying to budget in general, 2) we have to save for the little one coming and 3) black Friday deals for things we actually NEED break our budget a little. So instead of going out, we spent $2.19 for pancake mix (yes, we were going to cheat and just flavor up the mix instead of starting from scratch) and we used ingredients we had in the house.

And, it WORKED! We just ate a HUGE breakfast and it was delicious. My husband decided to use some of my blackberries I snack on and make cinnamon sugar blackberry pancakes. I decided to replicate the gingerbread pancakes I had two years ago. (And my pancakes turned out WAY more successful than his!!) We also made some tater tots and oatmeal. Yum!

So for the blackberry pancakes, all my husband did was mix up the pancake mix, then put blackberries on the pancakes once he dropped them on the griddle and sprinkled some cinnamon sugar on each pancake.


They were good, but needed a little more spice - so we either needed to mix the cinnamon sugar into the batter or add some stronger flavor like straight cinnamon or nutmeg or something. But we liked the tart blackberries with the pancakes.


Here is the (general) recipe I used for my gingerbread pancakes.
- One cup boxed pancake mix
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp ground ginger
- 2 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
- 7 tsp brown sugar
- 3/4 cup water

Mix well and drop spoonfuls onto a griddle as usual.




To me, they tasted AMAZING! I was so proud of my effort to throw it together. I read two similar recipes online so I kind of combined them and winged it and it worked. And we have a bunch of pancakes leftover for the rest of the weekend! Yay!

I decided to add whipped cream and sprinkles to my gingerbread pancakes because that is how I was served at i-Hop and man, it was delicious. :-)


All in all, it was a great Thanksgiving morning. Next year, we will be eating on the road as we trek to Albany with an 8 month old.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!