Chocolate Pancakes & Homemade Syrup

I'm in the middle of packing for a move, so my home-cooked meals have been a bit on the makeshift side lately. The other night I was making dinner for my husband, myself, and one of our friends, and I decided to make breakfast. My friend is allergic to corn, which is in almost everything store bought, so I decided to just make the pancakes from scratch, and make a syrup for her since the bottled one I had contained corn syrup. 

I gave my husband a choice between normal pancakes and chocolate pancakes, and he opted for the chocolate ones. 

The batter smelled exactly like melted chocolate ice cream, though since it's a pancake recipe and not a cake batter, it's not very sweet at all- definitely best served with syrup.

Here is the recipe:

Chocolate Pancakes

1 cup AP flour

1/2 cup cocoa (sifted)

1.5 tsp bkng soda

1 tsp OJ or vinegar (to activate the soda)

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

1.25 cup milk

1 egg

3 tbsp melted butter

- Combine dry ingredients

- Add liquid ingredients and whisk together

- Use an ice cream scoop for consistent size

You may notice how very little sugar is actually in the recipe- it isn't a terribly sweet recipe, even though it's decadent chocolate. These pancakes would also be excellent served with whipped cream. If you want to make them chocolate-orange, just substitute half of the milk for orange juice- but add them to the batter separately.

Between batches of pancakes, I threw together the syrup. I wanted to make it thicker than the classic 1:1 ratio of a simple syrup, so here is what I did:

Vanilla Cinnamon Simple Syrup

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup water

2 tbsp vanilla extract

2 dashes cinnamon

- Combine all ingredients into a small pot, bring to a rolling boil, stirring occasionally

- Boil until sugar is completely dissolved

In another skillet, I cooked turkey sausage, which requires draining to get a good sear on the meat. After the sausage was cooked, I used the same skillet to cook the scrambled eggs. This allowed all that awesome sausage residue to flavor the eggs.

I'd already packed the syrup pitcher, so I just served the homemade syrup in a mug with a spoon.