Cardamom Vanilla Pancakes

Cardamom Vanilla Pancakes are thick and fluffy pancakes, tangy with sour cream and fragrant with cardamom and vanilla. Affiliate links have been used to link to items I am discussing.

This was destined to either be a short and sweet post or a long and rambling overwrought post. Because that stress I said I was under?

We’re moving.

As you can imagine, I have tons of mixed feelings. Anyone who has read this blog for a while and read, for example, all my posts about exploring our creek, knows how much I love where we live. How grateful I have been to raise my kids “free range” so to speak on several acres of nature in a house we built.

A selfie of Alex and myself taken while I was stretched out on a log, lying across our creek, taken just this spring. I usually wear a hat down there to prevent ticks from jumping into my hair.

So I spent the winter freaking out. And adjusting. And getting excited. The Spiced Life is moving to Pittsburgh, specifically to a “suburb” (it is not very suburban) a little over 30 minutes east of downtown Pittsburgh, where hopefully we will make new memories on another gorgeous parcel of nature. And John, who has been a professor since 2000, is leaving academia and headed to Google.

I think that is all I have right now on that topic. Like I said either short and sweet or overblown with all of my mixed feelings. I am avoiding the feelings right now, or this post will never get written.

These Cardamom Vanilla Pancakes were exactly the kind of comfort food “breakfast for dinner” that I have been craving lately. I took a basic sour cream pancake from Gourmet International Pancakes and Waffles, an ancient gem of a cookbook my sister found for me, and added the vanilla and cardamom. The girls and I loved these pancakes; John was more restrained in his appreciation but honestly he has never loved pancakes the way that the rest of us do anyway. He doesn’t even put syrup on them!

The cardamom flavor is not super pronounced, but it is there. If you love Swedish sweet baked goods, for example, you will like these. But if you hate them maybe not so much (I would ask who in their right mind dislikes Swedish sweet breads but I already know my sister does!). The flecks that you can see are from the ground vanilla beans, which I used because I was on an antibiotic that I needed to avoid even the slightest trace of alcohol with. Vanilla extract should work just fine–but be sure to add it with the liquids in that case.

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Cardamom Vanilla Pancakes

Adapted from Gourmet International; we like to make a lot of pancakes at once--not only do we love them, but we can save leftovers for weekday mornings. Cut the recipe in half if about 16 pancakes is too many.

Course: Breakfast

Cuisine: pancakes

Author: TheSpicedLife

Ingredients

• 1 cup (126 g) AP flour
• 1 cup (135 g) white whole wheat flour
• 6 T sugar
• 1 T baking powder
• 1 t fine sea salt
• 2 t ground cardamom
• 2 t ground vanilla beans (you can sub 1 T vanilla extract)
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups half and half
• 2/3 cup full fat sour cream
• 3 T vegetable oil (I used avocado)
• 3 T melted ghee (clarified butter), plus more for cooking pancakes

Instructions

1. Whisk together the flours, sugar, baking powder, salt, cardamom and ground vanilla beans (if using vanilla extract, add with liquids) in a medium-large bowl. Set aside.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, half and half, sour cream and oil.
3. Fold the liquids into the dry ingredients. When they are mostly but not completely combined, add the melted ghee and fold everything together until it is completely blended--some lumps are ok though, do not over-mix.
4. Cook the pancakes one at a time on a hot griddle with a tiny (about half teaspoon) bit of melted ghee brushed over the griddle (or nonstick pan). When the edges of dried out and the center has bubbled a bit, flip the pancake and brown the other side (it often takes me a pancake or two to discover the perfect temperature to be cooking them at).
5. Serve hot with salted butter and maple syrup.

Click here if you are looking for a collage to pin–it was too big for the page!