We’re back with our Sweet Potato Chronicles friends, Ceri and Laura, authors of the phenomenal cookbook, How to Feed a Family. To start 2014 off right, we’re getting Back to Breakfast! These healthy, delicious recipes will be loved by the whole family. Next up from our ladies: Pancake tacos (these are crazy-genius)!

Born out of des­per­a­tion to not waste the week­end’s left­overs, the pan­cake taco is the new hit of our house­hold. Scar­lett lit­er­ally thought it was a joke when I served it to her one morn­ing. “Is this really my break­fast? Can I eat this now?” she asked cau­tiously. She basi­cally thought it was a treat. And it kind of is, espe­cially if you pile it high with any deli­cious­ness you can think of.

If you make pan­cakes on the week­end then dou­ble the recipe for left­overs. This will give you plenty of stock for the week. I’ve included my Spiced Pan­cake recipe because they really are the gold stan­dard of cak­ers. I’m not brag­ging or any­thing (ok, I am a bit) but dur­ing our last shoot our pho­tog­ra­pher Maya, with a mouth-full of pan­cake, yelled across the stu­dio, “You really are the pan­cake bat­ter Queen.”

But the spicy flavour of these flap­jacks really are a great com­ple­ment to most any fill­ing. I just pop the left­over pan­cakes in a toaster oven while I prep the fill­ing. For assem­bly, place a small piece of parch­ment (or nap­kin) in the palm of your hand and gen­tly cup the warm pan­cake so it takes on a taco shape. Then freestyle your fill­ing, choose from our selec­tion of ideas below or cre­ate one based on what your fam­ily loves or, let’s be hon­est, what you actu­ally have left in the refrig­er­a­tor. Have fun cre­at­ing new vari­a­tions, and don’t worry if overzeal­ous hands crack the base of the pan­cake. It all still tastes awesome going down.~Laura Keogh

Spiced Pan­cakes

Ingredients:

• 2 cups spelt flour (you know the SPC drill….use what you’ve got)
• 2 tea­spoons bak­ing pow­der
• 1 tea­spoon bak­ing soda
• 1 table­spoon cin­na­mon
• 1/4 tea­spoon fresh, grated nut­meg
• 1/4 tea­spoon salt
• 1 cup but­ter­milk
• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1 tea­spoon vanilla extract
• But­ter for pan

Method

In a large bowl, whisk flour, bak­ing pow­der, soda, cin­na­mon, nut­meg and salt.

In a medium size bowl, whisk milk, but­ter­milk, egg, and vanilla extract. Com­bine wet ingredients into flour mix­ture and stir until just com­bined. (Don’t over mix the bat­ter, in other words you can leave some lumps, since over­work­ing it will cause the gluten in the flour to be released caus­ing chewy pan­cakes.) Let your bat­ter rest in the refrig­er­a­tor for a few minutes.

Mean­while, place a large skil­let over medium heat and allow it to get nice and warm.

Remove bat­ter from the refrig­er­a­tor. Add a table­spoon of but­ter to skil­let and allow it to melt and then, work­ing in batches, ladle bat­ter into skil­let and cook pan­cakes until bub­bles appear on sur­face. Flip and cook another minute or two. Remove from skil­let and keep warm in the oven. Repeat until you’ve used the batter.

Taco Fill­ing Ideas (but the options are end­less, really)

Nutella, sliced banana (shown above left)

Sliced banana, sliced straw­ber­ries, a few dol­lops of Greek-style yogurt, sprin­kle of cin­na­mon (shown above right)

Sliced straw­ber­ries, blue­ber­ries, Greek-style yogurt, driz­zle of honey

All-natural peanut but­ter, sliced bananas, a driz­zle of honey, sprin­kle of shaved almonds

All-natural peanut but­ter, blue­ber­ries, a driz­zle of honey

Sliced bananas, sliced straw­ber­ries, a few dol­lops of Greek-style yogurt

All-natural almond but­ter, sliced apples, driz­zle of maple syrup, sprin­kle of cinnamon

For more amazing recipes from Sweet Potato Chronicles, visit our special Cityline.ca section. And of course head on over to their site for tons of amazing recipes and ideas!

Photo credit Maya Visnyei 

http://www.mayavisnyei.com/