Pumpkin Pancakes

Last weekend my house hosted a pumpkin beer festival. We had all of our friends bring pumpkin beer or a pumpkin food item. The turn out was phenomenal. We had pumpkin tortilla soup, baked pumpkins, pumpkin French toast, curried lentils with pumpkin, homemade pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin pie ice cream, pumpkin seeds, pumpkin bread, pumpkin curry, pumpkin pudding and at least nine kinds of pumpkin beer. I utterly failed in capturing the beauty of this event on film, so I made up for it this weekend by making pumpkin pancakes for breakfast. Even the pumpkin adverse loved this recipe. We topped ours with apples, honey and more cinnamon.

Pumpkin Pancakes adapted from Epicurious

Yield: Makes about 12 Ingredients 1 1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour 3 tablespoons sugar 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 1/4 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (or a generous pinch of both cinnamon and nutmeg) 3/4 teaspoon salt 1 1/3 cups whole milk 3/4 cup canned pumpkin 4 large eggs, separated 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1. Whisk first 5 ingredients in large bowl to blend. 2. Whisk milk, pumpkin, egg yolks, melted butter and vanilla in medium bowl to blend well. 3. Add pumpkin mixture to dry ingredients; whisk just until smooth (batter will be thick). 4. Using electric mixer, beat egg whites in another medium bowl until stiff but not dry. Fold whites into batter. 5. Brush large nonstick skillet with butter; heat over medium heat. Working in batches, pour batter by 1/3 cupfuls into skillet. 6. Cook until bubbles form on surface of pancakes and bottoms are brown, about 1 1/2 minutes per side. 7. Repeat with remaining batter, brushing skillet with oil between batches.