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Thursday, January 1, 2015

To Celebrate the New Year: Chocolate Pancakes with Raspberries and Bacon



I have a personal policy to not order restaurant menu items that I could conceivably make at home.  Make well, at home, I mean.  For instance, I make a really tasty lasagna, and a very tasty eggplant parmasan, and I can even make buttery garlic bread sticks with a golden crispy outside and a soft warm inside.  So, I usually avoid Italian restaurants and opt for places that serve entrees I don't make so well at home - like murgh tikka massala. (Oh, how I love Indian food.........  mmmm........ Indian food.........)

Ahem.  Sorry. 

Last weekend, I had the most delightful morning out with some of my family members in from out of town.  My mom treated all the ladies to brunch at a very trendy place where the menu was a tough one - so many delectable-sounding things to choose from and only stomach room enough for one.  I ultimately chose the rice bowl with Korean spare ribs and pickled vegetables (oh. my. goodness. it. was. unbelievably. delicious.) and a spiiiiiicy bloody Mary.  I forewent the chocolate pancakes with raspberries and bacon thinking - rice and vegetable are healthier for me and I think I could make that chocolatey-raspberry-bacony goodness at home.

So to celebrate the New Year, I did.  

I served it for dinner.

My family really loved me.




I used this pancake recipe from My Thirty Spot.   I tripled it to feed my large and hungry family.  I did not make the marshmallow topping, just the pancakes.  They were very cocoa-y, and were not too sweet.  They were juuuuuust right.




So pretty to see fresh fruit in the winter :)







I baked the bacon in the oven, of course.  Because since I learned about that little trick back in October, that's now the only acceptable way to cook bacon.  All those years, I never cooked real bacon because of the greasy mess, and could honestly say I wasn't really a bacon-eater.  Now, in the past three months, I've eaten more bacon than in all the rest of my life combined.  







Because I was trying to copy the menu offering as best as possible, I decide to make my own chocolate sauce for the first time ever.   It was easier than I expected and tasted so amazing, no husband of mine will ever be allowed to bring a squeeze bottle of chocolate syrup into this house again.  

This is the recipe I used -- I doubled it, but probably didn't need too.  We still have some left over in the fridge, which is kind of a dangerous situation.  

(No pics of the actual cooking process because I was non-stop stirring bubbling, steaming chocolate.  Make your own and you'll see what it looks like.)







I don't recall there being chocolate shavings on the restaurant pancakes, but it seemed like the right thing to do since I had a dark chocolate bar in my pantry and because... chocolate shavings.








The only sad side to this story is that I really wanted to make my own whipped cream so that the homemade effort would be complete.  But I didn't have any whipping cream and I did have a tub of whipped topping, so I went with the obvious and easy option.  Some nights, you just can't do it all.  Know what??  It still tasted awesome.






If you are a person who likes chocolate, raspberries, and bacon (which you probably are, since that describes 99.98% of the world's population), I think you should try it.

Happy New Year!

13 comments:

  1. Sound so yummy!!! I think I'll try this one day.

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  2. Theresa, this looks and sounds amazing!!! Def going to make this for our next Sat brunch at home!!!

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  3. You are so my kind of person. I haven't eaten pork since junior high, but bacon, smelling it is the ONE thing that makes me reconsider. I love that you made it for dinner. Just fabulous.

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    1. Dinner-time surprises like this every so often earn me a lot of mama points :) New Year's Day seemed like a good time to "treat' my family!

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  4. mmmmm, that looks so, so good! we should go out sometime with lori for indian food. tandoori's? though star of india on delaware in kenmore is also extremely good. mike and i love indian food but it is surprisingly hard to find people, let alone couples, that share our taste. go figure?! but i too don't want to waste money on something i can make at home and despite how hard i try, my indian food just cannot compare to the restaurant version.

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    1. Agreed - homemade attempt are never the same and I always wish I would have just spent the money on the real thing instead.
      Let's plan an Indian date - just the ladies or with the guys?? If I was going w/o Russ, I'd save him the sorrow and tell him I was going grocery shopping so he wouldn't sit at home moping :)

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    2. we are cool with whatever. always nice to bring the boys, but also nice not having to obtain a babysitter. so whatever you are up for ;)

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  5. Those look totally delicious! Thanks for the "eye" candy!

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    1. Your welcome :) And thanks for helping out with my comment question, Danielle! I really appreciate it! Now I can head to bed in peace ;)

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  6. Yum! And why have I never thought to make my own chocolate sauce before!? I need to do that.

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    1. Making the sauce was so easy and TOTALLY worth it. It was delicious!

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