Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Chocolate chip pancakes have become a tradition in our house after spending a long weekend at the Wisconsin Dells.  The boys were 2 and 4, our daughter wasn’t even born yet.  We went to a restaurant called Mr. Pancake which had long lines and boasted 50 different varieties of pancakes.  There were so many choices, it was hard to choose!  I was still undecided when my husband said to the waitress, “I’ll have the chocolate chip pancakes”  Oh, my gosh those sounded great, so I ordered the same thing.  Let’s just say they weren’t the healthiest thing on the menu.  The pancakes were about as round as the dinner plate, stacked high, with gooey chocolate chips, and served with whipped cream on top!   They were fantastic, and we were on vacation, so we splurged.  Thus started a weekend tradition of making chocolate chip pancakes that we have done for the last 8 years.  Usually we would just start with Bisquick, or some brand of pancake mix.  After doing this so many times, I thought, I’m sure these would be just as good made from scratch and cheaper too!

•  2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 TB sugar
• 2 cups skim milk
• 2 eggs
• 2 TB melted butter
• 1/4 cup ground flax seed
• 1/4 mini chocolate chips (or more if you aren’t watching your weight!)

In a bowl, mix all the ingredients until just moistened.  Do not over mix.  You don’t want the flour to mix too much because the batter will become more doughy and not stay light.   In a griddle pan sprayed with Pam, use 1/4 cup measure to ladle to batter onto the skillet.  Cook for several minutes on each side until done.   This recipe made 14 huge pancakes.  Each pancake was 125 calories, 3.2 fat and .7 grams of fiber.   My favorite sugar free syrups are Smucker’s Sugar free syrup and Mrs. Butterworth’s sugar free syrup.  It’s so good!   OR you can spread a small amount of Nutella on top and fold it over like a taco!  (I told you the Nutella was bad stuff!)  It’s fantastic!