Transform plain pancakes into a delicious stack with add-ins! This post has a list of ingredients you can add to your pancake batter as well as how much to add without messing it up!
What to Put in Pancakes
You can pretty much transform any pancake recipe to your liking with fresh fruit, chocolate chips, cooked fruit, frozen fruit, nuts, and savory add-ins and toppings. In fact, this is exactly what I do to switch things up on any given weekend for my family.
I usually start with my viral Fluffy Pancake recipe and add some add-ins to the batter. You can also do this when using a pancake mix or a gluten-free pancake recipe.
Favorite Things to Add to Pancakes
Fruits
- Strawberries: fresh or frozen added to the batter make incredible strawberry pancakes. You can also add roasted strawberries to the batter or drizzle the pancakes with Strawberry Syrup.
- Banana + Walnuts: this combination yields banana bread pancakes!
- Apple Cinnamon: holy smokes this combination is a match made in heaven! Use this epic Apple Cinnamon Pancake Recipe.
- Blueberries: fresh or frozen can be added to pancakes to make delicious classic blueberry pancakes or hearty blueberry oat pancakes! Be extra and drizzle some Blueberry Syrup on top.
- Peaches: fresh, frozen, or canned make up this fluffy peach pancake recipe.
- Pineapple: I love adding ¾ cup crushed pineapple to my pancake batter and make pineapple pancakes!
- Dried fruit or raisins: add ½ cup and some cinnamon for something sweet in each bite.
Mix-In Some Nutrients
- Greek yogurt: Yes! you can add this protein-rich ingredient and make healthy and delicious Greek yogurt pancakes.
- Yogurt: have regular yogurt (not Greek)? No problem. Use any flavored yogurt in his fluffy yogurt pancake recipe.
- Oats: these can be added to the batter or used as the main ingredient for pancakes. Make banana oatmeal pancakes or these fun mini oat pancakes.
- Chopped nuts: add ½ to your favorite pancake recipe or make these fluffy pecan pancakes.
- Grated carrots: grate 1 large carrot and add some pumpkin spice to make carrot cake pancakes.
- Zucchini: grate 1 zucchini, squeeze the water out and make savory zucchini pancakes. You can also make zucchini waffles.
- Spinach: a little bit of spinach in a blender with the liquid ingredients and you get epic green spinach pancakes!
- Sweet Potatoes: cooked sweet potatoes can be added to make these sweet potato pancakes.
- Bacon & Eggs: while technically not added into the batter, you can use pancakes as the holder and enjoy pancake tacos stuffed with scrambled eggs & bacon.
Flavor Add-Ins
- Lemon: zest up some lemon and a bit of juice and make these Lemon Blueberry Pancakes.
- Pumpkin puree: make these healthy pumpkin pancakes or these banana pumpkin pancakes year round!
- Pumpkin spice: make this pumpkin spice pancakes recipe for a holiday classic stack.
- Cinnamon: a little goes a long way! Make fluffy cinnamon pancakes or for a treat make Cinnamon Roll Pancakes drizzled with a cream cheese frosting, like cinnamon rolls or a simple Cinnamon Syrup.
- Cocoa Powder: use cocoa powder and red food coloring to make these red velvet pancakes!
- Espresso powder: coffee lovers rejoice! Add 1 ½ teaspoons of instant coffee and 2 tablespoons sugar to your batter for a caffeinated stack!
- Matcha: this green tea powder can be added in to make matcha pancakes!
- Chocolate chips: wow wow wow. First, try the classic pancakes with chocolate chips; add banana, and make banana chocolate chip pancakes, or for a double dose of chocolate, make double chocolate pancakes!
- Peanut Butter: add peanut butter to the batter and make these peanut butter pancakes!
- Buttermilk: this is a classic ingredient used to make old fashioned buttermilk pancakes used as the liquid in the recipe.
- Oat milk: Yes! you can use oat milk as the liquid for your batter to make incredible oat milk pancakes.
- Nutella: yes, you can add everyone’s favorite chocolate spread to the batter to make Nutella Pancakes! About 2 tablespoons.
- Egg nog: swap this for the milk in pancakes and enjoy a stack of festive egg nog pancakes!
- Sprinkles: single colored or multi-colored plus vanilla and you’ll get sprinkled pancakes! Add 1 ½ tablespoons of sprinkles and 1 teaspoon vanilla to the batter.
- Molasses: a couple of tablespoons (about 2) and turn your stack into gingerbread pancakes! You’ll need cinnamon and ginger too.
What Can You Add to Pancake Batter?
Wet or Liquid add-ins: from mashed banana, yogurt, or pumpkin puree, about ½ cup max.
Dry or Fruit add-ins: between ½ to ¾ of non-liquid add-ins like chocolate chips, fruit, or nuts.
You can always freeze leftover pancakes for later or double the batch and freeze the batter for later!
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