Sometimes It Starts With A Mix

I have a confession to make this morning.  And it’s about pancakes.  While I do make my own homemade versions of pancakes from time to time, I have to confess that most of the time, the pancakes that I make come from a bag.  Yes, I use pancake mix, and I’m not ashamed of it.

A few years ago, Andy started doing a free breakfast event at our church, and we would go to Sam’s Club and pick up the things needed for that breakfast.  One of those things was pancakes, and with jumbo bags of Krusteaz pancake mix selling for just a few dollars, that was a given.  One bag, made according to package directions would make 120 pancakes.  So we’d buy a handful, and then inevitably, there would be leftover.  Now, since they are jumbo bags of mix, we had a hard time giving them away, no one wanted this monster bag of mix, so we took most of them back home, and pancakes started being made more frequently.  After all, we had six bags of this stuff.   All I needed to make pancakes was a griddle and water, it just doesn’t get easier than that.  Over time, we’ve made a dent, and then more pancake mix came, and, well, we’re just used to this mix now, and prefer our pancakes made from it.  So sue me, I like it.  🙂

But recently, it occurred to me that this mix could maybe be used for more.  Like Bisquick or Jiffy Mix, perhaps there were more uses for this mix besides pancakes and waffles.  So I went to the Krusteaz website, and sure enough, there were recipes there that utilized this mix.  I decided to try their Pumpkin Pancake variation, since I had some pumpkin puree on hand that needed to be used.  I didn’t have the pumpkin pie spice called for, but I did use cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger to make my own spice blend. (Heavy on the cinnamon.)   The results were some of the best pancakes I’ve ever eaten.  Really and truly, these pancakes were heavenly, they were like a cross between eating gingerbread and pumpkin pie.  With just a drizzle of syrup, I had a hard time deciding I was full and had no more room for pancakes.

So while I do try for the most part to make my own everything homemade and from scratch, sometimes, you just need a mix to get it going.  With a jumbo bag of mix going for about six bucks, you just can’t beat that by making homemade pancakes.  For the budget conscious, these are a very wise buy, and an excellent way to help stretch the grocery dollar.