One Pan Cinnamon Sugar Pancakes

There is something about making breakfast on Sunday mornings.  We are pretty early risers, so even though we are going to head out to church, we usually have a pretty relaxed routine on Sunday mornings, and it just always seems like the right time to make breakfast.  These are the same idea as making your cookies in bar form.  Instead of standing and flipping multiples, you just make one pan, make some sausage (please make some sausage), then sit down, have a cup of coffee, and enjoy your morning!

I try to make this a two bowl dish.  Doing a ton of dishes in the morning is not my idea of a good time.  This fed my family of four, with a little bit leftover for breakfast the next day, so if you are making for a croud, you probably want to double or triple this depending on your numbers.

Pancake Batter: 

1 1/2 Cups Milk

4 Tbsp Melted Butter

2 large Eggs 

2 Cups Flour 

4 tsp. Baking Powder 

1/2 tsp. Salt

Cinnamon Sugar Swirl

4 Tbsp Melted Butter 

3/4 Cup Brown Sugar 

2 Tbsp. Ground Cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and grease or butter a large rimmed baking sheet or jelly roll pan.

You will need one stick of butter melted so just go ahead and throw it in a bowl and microwave it in 30 second intervals until melted.  Once melted, separate out the 4 Tbsp. that you need for the pancakes into a larger bowl and add your milk and eggs.  Stir together until combined.

Add your flour, baking powder, and salt, to the bowl with the butter/egg/milk mixture and  mix until there are no lumps.  Pour into the jelly roll pan.  

In the bowl with the reserved butter, add the brown sugar and cinnamon and mix it well with a fork or whisk.  

Drizzle the brown sugar mixture over the batter.  Now, you can get fancy here if you like and make whichever pattern you like.  I personally, have no artistic talent when it come to these things, so I drizzled 4 lines vertically, and 3 lines horizontally and then ran a butter knife through the batter and swirl a couple of times to make sure it was distributed.  

Bake for 7-8 minutes until it is set, it will not really brown up or get golden.  Remove from the oven, slice it up and serve with your usual pancake fixings.  

Things on the Want To Do List:

I have a problem, my eyes and imagination are always bigger than my time, my stomach, and my wallet.  That doesn’t keep me from pinning, printing, and saving everything I see that is yummy, sparkly, and wonderful.  These are the things I’m pining for this week.  

Handheld Chicken Pot Pies oh my!  Who doesn't love portable food?

I need to stop shopping, my closet has gotten smaller since the move, but still, one more shirt couldn't hurt. . .could it?  

I need another craft project right now like I need a hole in my head, but with the leaves changing color, I just can't stop myself from looking at yarn for this.

Crockpot Vegetable Soup

I made some huge changes to the way I eat and live my life about 5 years ago.  It has been slow, and I’ve learned the awful, terrible lesson that there are no quick fixes no magic pills (really there are NO pills, so save your money).  Every once in a while I find myself slipping back into the habits that got me in trouble in the first place, so I have to have a little conference with myself and hit the reset button.  When it comes time to get back in gear, I need to make something that is really good for me, hopefully tastes good, and that I can eat a lot of, because depriving myself never works out really well for me, or anyone as it turns out. 

This Recipe is a giant one, and you will need a BIG crockpot.  Please think of the ingredients below as a blue print, I usually put the beans, then the celery, carrots, & onions since they are the flavor builders.  I add the liquids and spices, and then go to town adding the other vegetables until the crockpot is full.  You can use whatever vegetables appeal to you, I throw spinach, kale, mushrooms, asparagus, corn, etc., basically anything that is in my fridge that I need to use up in and it all turns out fine.  

I like a lot of flavor, and as I’m sure you know if you’ve used your crockpot before, it can be a flavor killer, and the first few times I made this soup, it was just kind of, meh.  Then one glorious day, as I was making this soup, and simultaneously cleaning out the fridge I noticed a jar of spaghetti sauce staring at me from the back of the fridge, and I thought, why not?  It went in with everything else, and I’ve never made it any other way since. 

3 cups Northern Beans, soaked overnight (you can use 3 cans of kidney, northern, black beans,  etc.)

3 cups Celery, sliced or chunked up

1 small bag Baby Carrots chopped

1 white or red onion, chopped

1 bell Pepper

2 zucchini diced or sliced

2 cups Peas

1 ½ Cup Green Beans

1 dried chili (poblano, serrano, etc.)

1 can diced tomato with garlic and onion

2 boxes broth of your choice

1 Jar of Spaghetti Sauce

½ tsp Sea Salt

1 Tbsp dried Oregano

2 Tbsp minced garlic

1 Tbsp Olive Oil

½ tsp Creole Seasoning or Seasoned Salt

2Tbsp. Brown Sugar

• Start by adding the beans to the pot, and then your celery, carrots, & onion. 
• Add your broth, spaghetti sauce, olive oil, and spices.
• Continue adding your variety of vegetables until they are all either in the crockpot, or you’ve run out of room.  Turn your crockpot to Low Heat and let this go for 8 hours. 

**This soup freezes great.