My love affair with bacon is longstanding and well documented! I am still yet to meet a food which cannot be enhanced with bacon (although ice cream is very much a work in progress!) So when my family came to visit with tales of a bacon stuffed American style pancake that they were desperate to try I had to give it a go!!

A quick pinterest search later and I knew what I was aiming for but the recipes were a little full on (Butter and oil anyone? Or how about sugar and syrup in your pancake mix before dowsing in yet more syrup) I felt it only right to make it my own by putting a marginally healthier (this is bacon) spin on it so below is my resulting take on the more “traditional” recipes I found

A word about the bacon…

You need smoked streaky bacon for this. My first batch had unsmoked and the taste just didn’t work, we were missing that salty hit, which was remedied by spending a bit more on good thick smoked streaky. Once you get the right bacon it needs to be cooked in the oven rather than grilled or fried, so you get dry crispy bacon, as the crunch is needed to take the pancake to the next level!

Ingredients

• Smoked streaky bacon
• 1 mug of plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 mug of milk
• 1 egg
• Dash of vanilla
• Fry Light or oil
• Maple syrup to serve (I used sugar free maple syrup)

Method

Arrange your bacon on a baking tray in lines before putting in a cold oven and turning the temperature up to 180c/gas6

leave these for 20 minutes or until golden brown and crimping, then transfer to a flat surface covered in paper towel to get rid of any excess fat

Meanwhile make you batter. Add flour and baking powder into a jug and mix. Next add egg and milk, whisking until a batter is formed, lastly add a dash of vanilla and leave to stand till the bacon is ready.

 

Next heat up your pan and spray with frylight/oil.Pour bacon size strips of batter into your pan (mine went a bit wonky) cooking till you start to see bubbles

 

Then carefully add a strip of cooked bacon to each pancake gently pushing into the batter,

 

Finally using a brush painting more batter over the bacon then flip to finish the other side pushing flat with a spatula .

Set aside whilst you make some more!!

Once you have a stack of these enough for everyone then serve with maple syrup, honey or even ketchup!! These vanished within seconds of being made but one of the Kidlings wasn’t hungry so I kept his in the cooling oven and they were just as nice 2 hours later!!

Flabulous!!