Vegan peanut butter cup caramel mocha pancakes

I feel kinda guilty about posting these pancakes NOW, a mere five days before the ‘Murican celebration of Thanksgiving necessitating heaps of pumpkin pie and apple pie and cranberry sauce and—not that I’d ever put this in a dessert—turkey. I should really be posting recipes for pumpkin pie and apple pie and cranberry sauce. Yet today, we munch on these pancakes, slathered in peanut butter caramel and stuffed with peanut butter and chocolate chips and topped off with homemade peanut butter cup, as shameless as you have come to expect from this blog and just as sugary.

But guilt is not enough to prevent me from posting these, and so here they are.

DOES THAT MAKE ME ANTI-AMERICAN? source

Thankfully (no pun intended), I’ve got plenty of time between now and Thursday to whip up some desserts. We have three bombin’ treats on the menu this time around—some low-sugar, gluten-free pumpkin pie bars for the cousins; another Momofuku-inspired cake starring apple pie flavors; and some sticky toffee doughnuts. Why do I need doughnuts, you ask? Just cos. That should be reason enough.

More specifically: for football-watching fuel. source

These pancakes were born when I stumbled upon Healthy Happy Life’s recipe for peanut butter cup caramel lattes, a devilish combination of espresso and peanut butter cups and rich, gooey peanut butter caramel. Upon spying the ingredients list, my first thought was something along the lines of holy fuck I need this; but later, I decided (as is the tradition for How to Philosophize with Cake) that those flavors would go quite well in a stack of pancakes.

So here it is. Peanut butter pancakes studded with chopped chocolate. Gooey peanut butter caramel. Homemade PB cups. There’s nothing more you could want from a breakfast.

Except pumpkin pie. Or maybe cookie dough.

For a healthy twist, I used a peanut butter pancake recipe with both oat flour and flaxseed—which, after letting the batter sit overnight, gave me some very thick and chewy pancakes. They were good, just a bit different in texture. Almost like oatmeal cookies. Just something to keep in mind while you whip these up.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over PANCAKES.

Here’s the recipe.

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Vegan peanut butter cup caramel mocha pancakes

Inspired by Healthy Happy Life’s latte recipe

Makes about 4 servings of pancakes, plus extra peanut butter cups and caramel

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Peanut butter cups

Ingredients

84 grams • nondairy chocolate chips • ½ cup

64 grams • peanut butter • ¼ cup

Ingredients

In a small saucepan over low heat, melt chocolate chips, stirring occasionally. You could also temper the chocolate if you fancy (like that).

Line about 10 mini cupcake tins with paper liners. Drizzle a little bit of chocolate at the bottom of each. Next, spoon about a half teaspoon or so of peanut butter in the center—flatten out if necessary. Cover the peanut butter blob with more chocolate.

Place cups in the freezer to firm up. If you so desire, sprinkle a little bit of fleur de sel on top of each.

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Peanut butter caramel

Adapted from Healthy Happy Life

Ingredients

36 grams • granulated sugar • 3 tablespoons

30 grams • coconut cream • 2 tablespoons

32 grams • creamy peanut butter • 2 tablespoons

Pinch salt

Instructions

Melt all ingredients together in a small saucepan over high heat, stirring consistently. Once the mixture begins to bubble, cook, continuing to stir, for about another minute. Reduce heat to low for another minute. Remove from heat and pour “caramel” into another dish. Stir for about another minute so it doesn’t separate. Let cool before using.

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Pancakes

Adapted from Minimalist Baker

Ingredients

32 grams • peanut butter • 2 tablespoons

16 grams • flaxseed meal • 2 tablespoons

60 grams • water • ¼ cup

244 grams • nondairy milk • 1 cup

40 grams • maple syrup • 2 tablespoons

8 grams • baking powder • 2 teaspoons

4 grams • baking soda • 1 teaspoon

4 grams • vanilla extract • 1 teaspoon

82 grams • oat flour • 1 cup

64 grams • whole wheat pastry flour • ½ cup

4 grams • espresso powder • 1 teaspoon

40 grams • nondairy chocolate chips or chopped chocolate • ¼ cup

Instructions

In a medium bowl, whisk together peanut butter, flaxseed, water, nondairy milk, and maple syrup until smooth. You may need to heat it slightly to get the peanut butter soft enough to combine thoroughly. Stir in baking powder, baking soda, vanilla extract, oat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, and espresso powder, being sure to fully incorporate the flour. Fold in chocolate.

Fry pancakes on a well-preheated pan until golden brown on each side. Top with a peanut butter cup and peanut butter caramel.

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Aw yiss.

On an unrelated note—I’ve just begun using a new search engine entitled Duck Duck Go: an adorable and well-designed new site created by yet another startup hoping to change the status quo. They call it “the search engine that doesn’t track you”, a fabulous selling point considering that Google has basically made its fortune by blasting targeted ads at users based on as much information it can glean about users as possible. Consider the way Google works with the NSA as if it is a close business ally. That’s the kind of company that I, personally, want to avoid. Not to mention that monopoly is never good, even on the internet.

Or whatever. We can all make our own decisions about what we do online. Just throwing it out there.