Tess Rose Lampert is a New York City-based writer, beverage educator, and lover of savings. With over a decade in the alcoholic beverage industry, she strives to enhance consumers' everyday experiences with food and beverage through dynamic and interactive writings, educational seminars, and events.
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Pancakes are one of the ultimate comfort foods, and luckily, tend to be cheap and easy to make quickly using kitchen staples. From classic to creative, these recipe offer almost any flavor you can imagine worked into fluffy breakfast treats — some of which are more like dessert. These 45 recipes are tried and true, and can serve as creative inspiration for your next pancake creations.
Related: 30 Cheap, Easy Breakfast Ideas to Start the Day Right
Sure, there are store-bought mixes, but the ingredients for these buttermilk pancakes are so basic that everything needed for a from-scratch batch is already on hand, except the buttermilk. Making pancakes from scratch is even cheaper than buying premixed dry ingredients, and still easy to do.
Recipe: Fine Cooking
These hearty pancakes are made from buckwheat and naturally gluten free — because buckwheat is not actually wheat. The flavor is nutty and robust, offering more complexity than the average white flour versions.
Recipe: Cookie + Kate
An old-time favorite, loaded blueberry pancakes are hard to resist. Using frozen blueberries works well, as long as they are thawed before being added to the batter. This recipe uses beaten egg whites to add extra fluffiness.
Recipe: The Spruce
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Banana nut is a popular breakfast flavor that pairs effortlessly with a standard pancake recipe. Adding mashed banana directly to the batter creates an extra moist and flavorful finished product. Leave some chunks of banana in for a double dose.
Recipe: Just a Taste
Using a few berries in the batter as well as making a maple berry compote for topping pancakes brings maximum berry flavor. Since frozen berries work well, it's an easy go-to recipe for people trying to eat more fruit.
Recipe: Taste
These are the things dreams are made of. This recipe requires a little technique and the extra step of making pre-frozen Nutella disks, which get added once batter is in the pan and topped by more batter for a full casing. Genius.
Recipe: RecipeTin Eats
Related: Nutella Is Just the Start: Fancy Peanut Butters and Other Spreads to Try
An indulgent and sugary dish that's more of a dessert than a balanced breakfast. The topping, made of chocolate, marshmallow fluff, and graham cracker, is what takes these to the next level. Some might even opt to sprinkle some of the toppings into the batter for extra gooiness.
Recipe: Delish
While any type of chocolate is welcome in pancakes, this recipe is more refined by using mini chocolate chips. The mini chips help distribute chocolate evenly into all of the bites without overwhelming the actual pancake.
Recipe: This Gal Cooks
Mixing peanut butter into the wet ingredients of the batter works the smooth and rich flavor into every single bite. Peanut butter also adds extra protein and fat, balancing otherwise carb-heavy pancakes and making this a winner for those after a boost of inexpensive nutrition and flavor.
Recipe: Genius Kitchen
This basically turns cupcakes into pancakes so they seem like fair game for breakfast. The subtle flavors and bright color of the pancakes are a fun twist, but the icing on top made of cream cheese, milk, butter, and sugar is what takes these to the next level.
Recipe: Cooking Classy
Oatmeal and pancakes are not mutually exclusive when it comes to breakfast, and this recipe shows the best of both worlds. Quick or old-fashioned oats work in the recipe, and provide an inexpensive addition of nutrition to the meal.
Recipe: Quaker Oats
This recipe infuses the batter and a glaze with the zest and juice of lemons for authentic flavor throughout. Using Meyer lemons when they are in season or substituting orange would be fun twists on these citrus-inflected treats.
Recipe: Yellow Bliss Road
This method of making pancakes that are a cross between classic pancakes and apple pie is easy and quick. The batter gets a generous dose of cinnamon while a gooey apple compote is made for topping, creating a spectrum of flavors and textures.
Recipe: Creme de la Crumb
This recipe is for when a few chocolate chips are not enough and more of their flavor is needed in every bite. By mixing cocoa powder into the flour before assembling the batter, a decadent chocolate flavor perfumes the entire dish.
Recipe: Serious Eats
For those who appreciate a balance of sweet and spice in sugary breakfast foods, this recipe is loaded with traditional flavors. Generous additions of ginger, clove, cinnamon, and nutmeg are added to the batter, along with molasses, to create a robust and pleasantly piquant flavor.
Recipe: Genius Kitchen
Pancakes don't have to be sweet, even if that's what we are used to. Adding herbs and omitting sugar is just one way to create a light and tasty dish from traditional pancake batter. Dress them up anyway you like — for example, with ricotta and chili oil, as in this recipe.
Recipe: Food Network
If you love the seasonal flavor of eggnog, it's easy to create these specialty pancakes for chilly mornings: Replace the milk with eggnog and add some extra nutmeg to the batter.
Recipe: Recipe Girl
This easy recipe delivers all the flavors and textures of a cinnamon roll in pancake form. To make properly requires assembling three parts: the cinnamon filling, pancake batter, and cream cheese icing. But it's a lot easier than baking cinnamon rolls!
Recipe: The Recipe Critic
The addition of carrots, raisins, and cinnamon to pancake batter makes for a substantial and flavorful dish. The cream cheese frosting is quite literally the icing on top of an indulgent treat, but skip it for a healthier recipe.
Recipe: Bigger Bolder Baking
Using funfetti cake mix is a quick way to work in cake flavor and those fun, brightly colored sprinkles. A towering stack of these could stand in for a traditional birthday cake.
Recipe: PopSugar
Adding ricotta to pancake batter creates a more luxurious texture to the final product, adding moisture and fluffiness. It's also an easy way to extend the recipe and get more pancakes per batch.
Recipe: The Kitchn
These pancakes combine sweet and savory breakfast foods into a delectable treat. Adding a slice of cooked bacon to each pancakes creates a hybrid food that melds contrasting flavors into one bold dish.
Recipe: Martha Stewart
Pancakes shouldn't be off the table for those avoiding gluten. This recipe offers step-by-step instructions to master a basic recipe that can be varied in infinite ways. It's easy to get a light and fluffy texture using a combination of rice flours, cornstarch, and xanthan gum.
Recipe: Gluten-Free Baking
There's a full four doses of coconut throughout the recipe. Using coconut milk, coconut sugar, toasted coconut, and coconut oil create a seriously rich flavor that satisfies a deep coconut craving.
Recipe: The Minimalist Baker
Working chocolate and coffee into pancakes combines the best parts of brunch into one bite. The expected instant coffee and chocolate chips are complemented by cocoa powder and brewed coffee for intense flavor. There's nothing subtle about the flavors in this dish.
Recipe: Spoon University
This recipe infuses light and fluffy pancakes with some instant coffee for a subtle flavor. A caramel sauce is poured generously over the top, balancing the bitterness of the coffee with a buttery sweetness.
Recipe: Betty Crocker
Pancakes are spread with a cream cheese and strawberry mixture and topped with a strawberry sauce for an array of textures and flavors.
Recipe: Taste of Home
Healthy, cheap, and super trendy, pumpkin is a flavor worth exploring in all kinds of dishes. Adding a can of pumpkin puree extends the volume of the batter while imparting an earthy sweetness and natural fluffiness that feels and tastes so right.
Recipe: Once Upon a Chef
Using frozen cherries, vanilla extract, and a vanilla bean, regular pancakes are turned into a flavor explosion. This recipe suggests adding the extras into the batter, as well as layering cherry compote between pancakes.
Recipe: How Sweet Eats
This vegan recipe makes use of one of the least expensive superfoods, chia seeds. Chia seeds have a natural binding property, which means there are no eggs needed for this 100 percent vegan recipe that otherwise looks very similar to classic recipes.
Recipe: Running On Real Food
Aside from being fun, because green pancakes are a novelty, these ice cream-flavored pancakes are super easy to whip up. A small amount of mint and vanilla extracts are enough to flavor the entire batter, and the chocolate chips can be added at your discretion. Serving with vanilla ice cream should be mandatory.
Recipe: Epicurious
If you can't decide between a tropical drink and warm, fluffy pancakes, this recipe is your new best friend. What gives these pancakes their flavor is a combination of coconut flour, coconut sugar, and chopped pineapple throughout the batter. The topping is a simple yet decadent combination of coconut milk and maple syrup.
Recipe: Destination Delish
Peaches pair well with bourbon, and these pancakes make the best of it. The batter gets hit with bourbon and peaches, while more peaches get soaked in bourbon to be used as a topping. Since the bourbon is heated in both cases, this is safe for all ages to enjoy.
Recipe: Broma Bakery
A quick way to get buttery nut flavor throughout pancakes is to use butter pecan cake mix along with regular batter. Add a few nuts, a pat of butter, and a sweetener on top and it's a simple yet decadent treat.
Recipe: Simple Bakings
Why should doughnuts have all the fun when it comes to using apple cider in batter? Along with cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and grated apple, the cider makes an impossibly tender pancake that has the subtle, sweet, and tart flavor of apple season.
Recipe: The Woks of Life
Cardamom, ginger, and nutmeg combine in the batter to create a deeply warming spice that is at once subtle and pungent. The pistachios add crunch and a new twist for pancakes, a departure from the usual walnuts or pecans.
Recipe: Joyful Belly
Adding cornmeal to regular flour adds a dimension to the flavor and texture to pancakes. These hearty and versatile versions can be topped with everything from a sweet berry syrup to crumbled bacon.
Recipe: The Pioneer Woman
White chocolate has a subtler and creamier flavor than regular chocolate, which can make for a velvety texture and smooth flavor in pancakes. White chocolate chips are added to the batter in this recipe, melting gently to create sweet surprises as you eat.
Recipe: Supergolden Bakes
Bananas and pancakes is a classic combination, but bananas Foster pancakes take it to another level of sophistication and indulgence. Adding cinnamon and/or bananas directly into the batter in addition to a bananas Foster topping is optional, but why wouldn't you?
Recipe: Better Crocker
Sour cream is often used in baked goods to help achieve a moist and rich texture, and that's exactly what it does for pancakes. This is also an innovative way to use up leftover sour cream before it goes bad.
Recipe: Smitten Kitchen
These are serious pancakes, loaded with coffee, coffee extract, mascarpone cheese, and dark chocolate. Since there are so many added ingredients, it's important to slow down and be methodical when working the batter, allowing it to rest before cooking, and handling it just enough to avoid overmixing.
Recipe: Cooking For Keeps
Most people enjoy a savory breakfast meat alongside their sweet pancakes, so why not skip a step and combine them into one perfect food? This recipe envelops bites of sausage in fluffy pancake batter and fries them.
Recipe: Taste of Home
Ginger, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and molasses are the hallmarks of gingerbread. Skip the labor-intensive process for the cookies and infuse pancake batter with the spices for a seasonal flavor at breakfast.
Recipe: Real Simple
These paleo-friendly pancakes are loaded with bold chocolate flavor and a hint of subtle heat from a pinch of cayenne. The almond flour and cinnamon add to the richness of these Mexican-inspired pancakes.
Recipe: The Healthy Maven
Greek yogurt has a lot of culinary uses aside from being a delicious snack or smoothie addition. Here it is used to add body and texture to pancakes without adding extra oil. Using a flavored yogurt, such as vanilla, will infuse batter with even more flavor.
Recipe: Natasha's Kitchen
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