So remember how well we ate during the month of January? Through careful meal planning and budgeting, we ate remarkably well AND stuck to a very tight budget. February threw that all out the window. If I look back correctly, I think I’d almost blown my entire budget by about the 12th of February, and we were eating terribly! By the end of the month, I had milk and egg money and not not much else.
Menu planning is totally worth it. We did not eat well at all during the month of February. The last week of the month was rough- putting together what I could with what I had on hand, and that meant two breakfast meals in one week. One meal of pancakes, one of waffles. Same basic batter, cooked up and topped differently. But after our pancake meal, there wasn’t really enough syrup for four to top waffles along with our strawberries. I wondered if one could make a facsimile of pancake syrup at home. The more I thought about that, the more excited I got, because I am one of those rare people who actually likes pancake syrup. And by pancake syrup, I mean the fake stuff.
Confession time: I don’t like real maple syrup. Oh, I don’t mind it when I use it in baked goods or baked beans, or as part of something. But I don’t like the taste of straight up real maple syrup. My favorite syrup for plain old pancakes? Mrs. Butterworths, buttery maple-flavored goodness in a bottle. The problem with that and any other pancakes syrup is the fact that every single one on the shelf lists their number one or number two ingredient as high fructose corn syrup. I regret that every time I pour the sticky stuff on a pancake, but not enough to give it up completely.
Well, this recipe for homemade pancake syrup resembles my perfect syrup experience almost perfectly. The only difference I noted is that my homemade version is not as thick and sticky- I’m perfectly okay with that. The flavor was there, and even better, it used just a tablespoon and a half of corn syrup for the whole batch.
Because I used a touch of butter, I decided I should store this in the fridge, and as it’s been sitting for the past few days, the butter clearly separated out into a layer on top. I guess that means I’ll have to warm it up each time we want to use it. Warm syrup? Yum!
Oh, and by the way, I’m totally back on the meal planning bandwagon. I’ll share this week’s menu later.
Homemade Pancake Syrup
2 cups sugar 1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed 1 1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup 1 cup water 3/4 teaspoon maple flavoring 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 tablespoons butterIn a 2 quart saucepan, combine the sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup and water. Cook and stir occasionally until it comes to a boil. Cover the pan, reduce the heat to medium and cook for an additional 8 minutes, stirring once or twice.
Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the maple, vanilla, and two tablespoons of butter. Stir until the butter has completely disappeared.
Serve the syrup warm over pancakes or waffles. Store leftover syrup in a glass jar in the fridge and re-warm before using.