Lemon Pancakes

Fluffy, lemon pancakes topped with candied maple bacon with a cinnamon condensed milk drizzle! Dessert or breakfast? You decide! 🙂

Cake for breakfast! Who doesn't love that? Me, oddly! I think it's weird. I have never been a fan of super sweet things whenever I have breakfast made for me - it's almost always pancakes. So I needed a bit of a compromise here as I love my eggs and bacon and he seems to love his cake.

After much compromising, I came up with this lemon pancake recipe. A stack of lemon pancakes topped with caramelized maple bacon bits and then drizzled with a light cinnamon condensed milk. 🙂

You may wonder, how the heck is this less sweet than a normal pancake!? There's sugar in more elements than just the typical maple syrup! You're right this isn't less sweet than an average pancake breakfast but this recipes allows me to sit there and munch on bacon all morning while Terry eats the lemon pancakes.

This is a very versatile lemon pancake recipe, in fact you can probably replace the lemon zest for grated ginger, banana, chocolate chips etc.  Go nuts and be creative.

INGREDIENTS

For this lemon pancake recipe, all ingredients can be found at your local grocery store.

 Lemon Pancake Ingredients

I decided to use condensed milk as the sweetener for the actual pancakes since we were already opening a can to make the syrup. It turns out that was a good experiment. The condensed milk gave the pancake an extra creaminess that plain sugar would not provide.

Candied Maple Bacon Ingredients

Cinnamon Condensed Milk Ingredients

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Candied Maple Bacon

This one is quite simple to make, you just have to remember one thing - You need to put the bacon in the oven before it is pre-heated. I know weird right? I can't tell you how many times by habit that I wait until the oven reaches up to temp. By having a pre-heated oven, I found the bacon doesn't get nice and crispy since we are working with very high heat and it will just instantly cook in that temperature and then burn.

1. Lay out parchment paper over a cookie sheet and layout the bacon 1 at a time side by side.
2. Set the Oven to 400F (204C) and put the tray of bacon into the oven right away! Don't wait for it to pre-heat!
3. Set the timer to 15 minutes and wait
4. Once the timer goes off, remove the bacon from the oven and drizzle maple syrup on it and toss it around to coat it
   
5. Put it back into the oven for another 8 minutes or so (Oven temperatures will vary, so keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't burn!)
6. Remove it from the oven and place it on a plate to cool. If you're using parchment paper you won't have the issue of the bacon sticking to the pan, but if you made the bacon directly on the pan or used foil and let it cool on it, it will stick to the pan, so we want to move it off before it's glued on.
   

*Easy Clean Up? Yes Please!* If you hate scrubbing pans, don't be a dummy like me and use parchment paper! I didn't use it because I was experimenting and hoping for a crispier bacon without the parchment paper but guess what? bacon will be crispy regardless as long as you cook it long enough. 🙂

Can you keep your hands off before your pancakes are done? I have to admit, this was probably the best part of this recipe - and I simply could not stop snacking on it! 😀

Cinnamon Condensed Milk syrup

There's nothing to this, open a can of condensed milk, add milk and cinnamon and mix away!

Thick & Decadent? or a Thin Drizzle?
For the syrup, you can decide how thick you want it, just add in the milk 1 teaspoon at a time and mix! No more than 2 tablespoons though! I found that if you put put more than 2 tablespoons for ½ a cup of condensed milk it gets too runny and watery.

HOW TO GET FLUFFY PANCAKES?

While making pancakes, I often would get dense cakey pancake and I often thought it was because I was not putting in enough baking soda but that was not the case! The secret to fluffy pancakes is to not over mix your batter.

The OCD in me always wants smooth batter - but seriously don't do it. A smooth batter will produce a chewy dry pancake, where as the lumps in the lumpy batter has air and chunks of flour bits which produces a nice fluffy (not dry) pancake. 🙂 In order to prevent myself from over mixing I tell myself I'm only allowed to foldmix the batter 8-10 times max.

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN TO FLIP A PANCAKE?

Holes! When your batter starts to create bubbly holes, it's ready to be flipped over! If you are noticing that your pancakes are too burnt before they start forming the bubbles, then you might have the heat too high - just turn it down a bit. 🙂

Looking for More Breakfast Ideas? Try These!

• Breakfast Sandwich (with a Hash Brown!)
• Crispy Hash Browns

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Lemon Pancakes with Candied Maple Bacon & Condensed Milk

Fluffy, lemon pancakes topped with candied maple bacon with a cinnamon condensed milk drizzle! Dessert or breakfast? You decide!

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Course: Breakfast, Dessert

Cuisine: American

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

8 Pancakes

5 from 4 votes

Recipe Notes

• *IMPORTANT* In order to get fluffy pancakes, never over mix. A smooth batter will produce a chewy dry pancake, where as the lumps in the lumpy batter has air and chunks of flour bits which produces a nice fluffy (not dry) pancake. ? In order to prevent myself from over mixing I tell myself I’m only allowed to foldmix the batter 8-10 times max.
• How do you know when to flip a pancake? Holes! When your batter starts to create bubbly holes, it’s ready to be flipped over! If you are noticing that your pancakes are too burnt before they start forming the bubbles, then you might have the heat too high – just turn it down a bit

Ingredients

 

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Candied Maple Bacon

• ▢ 6-8 slices bacon
• ▢ ¼ cup maple syrup

Cinnamon Condensed Milk Syrup

• ▢ ½ cup condensed milk
• ▢ 1-2 tablespoons milk
• ▢ ¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Lemon Pancakes

• ▢ ¼ cup condensed milk
• ▢ 1 cup milk
• ▢ 1 egg
• ▢ 3 tablespoon unsalted butter (melted)
• ▢ 3 tablespoons lemon zest (approximately 2 large lemons)
• ▢ 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• ▢ 1 ½ cup all purpose flour
• ▢ 3 ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ▢ pinch salt

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Instructions

 

Candied Maple Bacon

• Lay out parchment paper over a cookie sheet and layout the bacon 1 at a time side by side.
• Set the Oven to 400F (204C) and put the tray of bacon into the oven right away! Don’t wait for it to pre-heat!
• Set the timer to 15 minutes and wait
• Once the timer goes off, remove the bacon from the oven and drizzle maple syrup on it and toss it around to coat it
• Put it back into the oven for another 8 minutes or so (Oven temperatures will vary, so keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t burn!)
• Remove it from the oven and place it on a plate to cool
• Once it's cool, chop it up or rip it up by hand and set it aside if you can refrain from eating it all first!

Cinnamon Condensed Milk Syrup

• In a small cup or bowl add in the condensed milk
• Add milk to it 1 teaspoon at a time, and mix. Adjust it to the thickness you enjoy more. A thicker syrup will be more decadent than the thinner one! but no more than 2 tablespoons else it thins it out too much
• Add in cinnamon and mix and set aside

Lemon Pancakes

• In a large bowl, combine the milk, condensed milk, melted butter, vanilla, lemon zest and egg and mix well. If you see small bits, don’t worry it’s probably your butter semi-solidifying from the cold milk, just means you’ll have tiny pockets of delicious butter in the pancake! (Note: make sure you put in the egg last so that the warm butter doesn’t cook the egg)
• In a small bowl, mix the baking powder, salt and flour together until combined and then add it to the liquid mixture and lightly mix the batter. *IMPORTANT* In order to get fluffy pancakes, never over mix. A smooth batter will produce a chewy dry pancake, where as the lumps in the lumpy batter has air and chunks of flour bits which produces a nice fluffy (not dry) pancake. ? In order to prevent myself from over mixing I tell myself I’m only allowed to mix the batter 8-10 times max.
• Set the stove to medium low heat and add a tablespoon of oil and let it come to temperature and then add a dollop of butter to melt.
• Add in ¼ cup of pancake batter into the pan. This batter is on the thicker side so when putting it in the frying pan, use the scoop to gently shape and spread it out to a less mountain like mound if you like thinner pancakes – and yes these do rise in the pan as well!
• Let it cook for about 2 minutes until bubbles form. Then flip it to cook for another 1-2 minutes on the other side.
• Repeat steps 4-5 for each pancake. If the pan is dry between cooking the pancake, add 1 tablespoon of oil and a bit of butter again.
• Once all the pancakes are cooked, assemble a mountain for yourself, topped with chopped candied bacon and drizzle condense milk over top and enjoy!

Nutrition

Serving: 1Pancake | Calories: 312kcal | Carbohydrates: 42g | Protein: 9g | Fat: 12g | Sodium: 237mg | Sugar: 24g

*Nutritional information is calculated using online tools and is an estimate*

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Made with ♡ by Joyce | Pups with Chopsticks