Recipe: Sweet Potato Pancakes

From Denny: Ready for a cool idea for a brunch or weekend breakfast like we often do in Louisiana? Here's one of my all time favorite recipes I've developed over the years. You can find many variations of this pancake recipe throughout Louisiana. This is a great way to use up mashed or baked sweet potato leftovers from a previous meal!

Sweet Potato Pancakes

From: Denny Lyon

Yield: about 20 pancakes


Ingredients:

1 ½ cups flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 eggs, beaten

1 ½ cups lowfat organic milk

1 ¼ cups melted clarified butter or canola oil (clarified butter tastes better! Once it’s clarified it’s as healthy as canola oil cholesterol wise.)

1 ¼ cups mashed, cooked fresh sweet potatoes (or canned)


Directions: In one larger bowl combine the dry ingredients of flour, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt. I like to use a wire whisk to combine so it is well distributed.

In a smaller bowl, combine the wet ingredients of the eggs, milk, butter, and sweet potatoes.

Now add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Just mix it only until blended. Drop batter by spoonfuls (I like to use a gravy ladle as it pours onto the ladle easier.) Try a small test pancake to check the heat of your burner. Depending upon whether you are using gas or electric will determine if you require medium or medium low heat.

You can cook these pancakes like regular pancakes except you do need to watch them a bit more since the sweet potato has a lot of sugar in it and can burn easier than a regular plain pancake. Fry on about medium heat until browned on one side well and then turn over to brown the other side for not quite as long.

Serve with clarified butter (you tend to use less as the taste is wonderful!) and we like heated (melted) orange marmalade into which we dip each perfect bite of pancake.

Makes about 20 sweet potato pancakes.

Photo by foodistablog @ flickr