A little Treat....

Yum Yum Yum!!!!

These are light and fluffy pumpkin pancakes made extra orange with food coloring and decorated for Halloween breakfast using cinnamon syrup that has been colored a dark black.

The recipe comes from Noble Pig, whom I'd like to thank for being bold enough to put a whole stick of butter into the batter. They need to cook a little longer than my usual pancakes and I found they needed a slightly lower heat than I'd normally use or they'd burn before the proper amount of bubbles came to the surface.

I added twice the cinnamon to the syrup and cooked it a little longer to make sure it would be thick enough to pipe. When I took it off the heat my syrup read 213 degrees, just barely over boiling.

Pumpkin Pancakes with Cinnamon Syrup

(Recipe from Noble Pig.com, with a few small changes by Not Martha.org.)

Very Orange Spiced Pumpkin Pancakes

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
• 1-3/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 egg, separated
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/2 cup butter, melted (1 stick)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• orange food coloring gel

In a large bowl, flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.

In a medium bowl, lightly beat egg yolk with a fork. Add milk, pumpkin puree and vanilla; mix well. Add melted butter. If the butter is hot, add it slowly or you will cook your egg yolk. Add a bit of the orange food coloring to the wet mixture at this point. Add more until it's about as orange as you can stand. Stir this mixture into dry ingredients, just until combined.

In another bowl, beat egg white until stiff peaks form. Gently fold egg white into batter.

Heat a griddle or large skillet over medium heat and grease lightly with vegetable oil. For each pancake, spoon about 1/4 cup batter onto the hot griddle. Cook until bubbles appear on the surface and the edges look dry. Turn over and cook until golden brown. The pancakes are delicate so stick to making small or medium sized pancakes, I put cracks in a few larger ones trying to flip them over.

Black Cinnamon Syrup

• 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
• 1/2 brown sugar
• 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup water
• black food coloring gel

In a saucepan combine white sugar, brown sugar, all-purpose flour and cinnamon. Stir dry ingredients together. Add vanilla extract and water. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Be really careful while boiling sugar, keep a bowl of ice water nearby just in case. As it heats squirt in a little of the black food coloring and mix in, add more until it's as dark as can be (it doesn't take much). Allow to boil for a few moments until the mixture has noticeably thickened. Remove from heat and allow to cool enough to put into a squirt bottle (of the ketchup style). You can make it the night before and warm it by dipping the squeeze bottle in a bowl of warm water. You might also have your pancake eaters create their own designs.

Decorate the pancakes with the syrup. By all means decorate the plate with extra syrup. I find spiders, spider webs and bats work out well. Serve with sausages, sausages are creepy looking enough on their own.

Here are some of the designs I tried that didn't quite work as I'd envisioned, a few details, and my first trials. What

Happy Halloween!

Thanks Not Martha!