Fluffy Pumpkin Pancakes – Plus 5 Other Fall Recipes!

7 October, 201528 November, 2015 ~ Grace ~ 1 Comment

Happy October, the month of everything pumpkin!

This morning, Mary came out of her room with a big fluffy blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and announced: “It finally feels like fall, it’s cloudy and wet outside and I smell pumpkin pancakes!” I had to smile because she is TOTALLY right. There is a definite feel of fall around here and I’m so ready for it!

These hearty pancakes are a wonderful fall morning treat. If you don’t have pumpkin pie spice mix on hand here is a link to my easy homemade mix.

Fluffy Pumpkin Buttermilk Pancakes!

Author: Queen Of The Red Doublewide

Recipe type: Breakfast

Serves: 10

Ingredients

1 & ¾ cups buttermilk
2 eggs
¼ cup maple syrup plus more for pouring on top
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ cup pumpkin puree
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie seasoning
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder

Instructions

Put the first five ingredients into a bowl and whisk together.
Put the rest of the ingredients in another bowl and mix.
Then pour the dry ingredients in with the buttermilk mixture and stir gently just until mixed. Let the batter sit (for bout 10 min) while your skillet heats to medium low.
Put a little butter into the skillet when it's hot and then WITHOUT stirring your batter scoop about one third of a cup out and fry it in the butter.
Let them cook for a couple minutes on both sides until golden brown and not doughy in the middle.
This recipe will make about 10 pancakes and they are wonderful served with butter and warm maple syrup!

Here are a few more fall recipes you might like to try out.

Easy slow cooker applesauce.

Tasty fall smoothies.

Homemade pumpkin pie spice mix that I use in most of these recipes!

Pumpkin chip bread.

Spiced pear butter.

I’m going to go grab a hoodie and go for a walk. Have a super day!

This recipe was shared at: The Weekend Potluck –

How To Freeze Waffles, Pancakes, And French Toast For Easy Weekday Breakfasts

17 February, 201423 September, 2018 ~ Grace ~ 8 Comments

This is the easiest thing EVER. Why have I not been doing this for years!?!? I love easy, yet healthy breakfast foods. The kind that I don’t have to worry about on weekday mornings. Lately when I have the time, I make a HUGE batch of fluffy whole wheat pancakes, or waffles and then freeze whatever is left. When I have bread that’s getting a little old I make french toast and put it in the freezer. (sorry chickens no more stale bread for you)

This is how I do it: Take your cooled off leftover pancakes, waffles, or french toast and layer them on a cookie sheet with parchment paper. (I have gone up to 4 layers) Try to make sure they are not touching so you don’t have to hack them apart.

Place them in the freezer until they are frozen through. The more layers the longer it will take. I just leave mine in over night. When they are frozen through, place them in a dated, resealable, freezer bag and put them back in the freezer.

It’s that easy, and now you have a homemade, fast, healthy breakfast on hand.

To reheat them on those crazy weekday mornings, just pop them in the toaster. You may have to adjust the timing or temperature on your toaster so they have time to thaw out and toast. My girls use the toaster for the waffles, pancakes, and french toast, but if you aren’t into crispy pancakes and french toast you can always microwave them for 1 to 2 minutes or preheat the oven or toaster oven to 350 degrees and bake them for 10 to 15 minutes.

It’s sooooo nice to have yummy, healthy options in the morning that don’t come from a box. 🙂

The Best Whole Wheat Waffles

20 January, 201423 September, 2018 ~ Grace ~ 8 Comments

Before a couple weeks ago I had never made waffles from scratch before. In fact I haven’t made waffles at all for about 10 years. I had always used a waffle mix before, but after deciding the mix was to expensive and REALLY time consuming for six people, I put the waffle iron up on the top shelf and forgot about it. Well I tried to forget about it, but the kids would ask every once in a while if we could make waffles and I would distract them with puff pancakes or baked pancakes. ANYTHING but waffles….I even played with the idea of throwing away the waffle iron so I had a good excuse not to make them. (I know, I’m awful!) My poor deprived girls wouldn’t even know what a waffle is if they hadn’t spent the night at grandma’s house 🙂 Anyway, in all my brain wracking trying to come up with healthy, easy breakfasts for those busy week day mornings, waffles came to mind. They aren’t exactly quick, but if I make a quadruple batch on the weekend and freeze them. Tadah!…I have a from scratch breakfast that we can enjoy on the weekdays and still make it out the door by 7:15.

While I said these are not quick for a weekday morning, they are not at all hard to make and the time consuming part is waiting for the waffle iron to do its job.

Start by separating the eggs. Mix together the egg yolks, milk, vanilla, and melted butter. In a separate bowl stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Stir the dry ingredients into the milk mixture, do not over stir.

Now this is the part that makes these light and wonderful! Beat egg whites until they are stiff then fold them into the batter.

Let the batter sit for a few minutes while the waffle iron preheats. Cook the waffles until they are a golden brown.

The Best Whole Wheat Waffles

This makes about 12 waffles.

Author: Queen Of The Red Doublewide

Ingredients

2 eggs-separated
1½ cups milk
⅓ cup melted butter or coconut oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour or 1 cup whole wheat and 1 cup all purpose flour (I recommend the pastry flour though)
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar - I use organic sugar or sucanat or you can omit the sugar altogether if you would like.

Instructions

Mix together the egg yolks, milk, melted butter, and vanilla.
In a separate bowl stir the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar together.
Stir the dry ingredients together with the milk mixture...don't over stir.
Whip the egg whites until they are stiff then fold into the batter.
Let the batter sit for a few minutes while the waffle iron heats up.
Bake waffles as recommend in your waffle maker until golden brown.

These really are the best!! I’m very glad I dusted off my old waffle iron to experiment (and so are my girls). 😉 We will be making these VERY often to have on hand out of the freezer.

Whole Wheat Cast Iron Skillet Biscuits

5 January, 201423 September, 2018 ~ Grace ~ 6 Comments

Over Christmas break I had time to do some long over due deep cleaning in the red double wide. I also did some purging and lots of STUFF went out the door, but when I came across my cast iron skillet I decided it was time to re-season it and put it to work. It was a lot dusty and a little rusty. Here are a couple before and after pics.

I had put this poor skillet in hiding shortly after my mom gave it to me….Why, you ask? Well I knew nothing about cast iron and the whole seasoning thing kind of intimidated me. Then, the first thing I attempted to cook was eggs……ya, they didn’t turn out so great!! By not so great, I mean a smoking, smelly, skillet with bits of crunchy black eggs. After that the top shelf in the laundry room seemed like a good home for the cast iron skillet. Recently I have come across some blogging posts about caring for your cast iron and some recipes that work well with it. They made it sound easy enough, so I thought I would give it a try. It made me feel a little better to read that though it’s not impossible, eggs are not the easiest thing to cook in cast iron. 🙂 I have decided to stay away from eggs until I am a more seasoned (haha) cast iron cook!

These biscuits are the first thing I made in my skillet. They turned out GREAT. They are light, flavorful, quick, and my favorite EASY!

2.0 from 1 reviews

Whole Wheat Cast Iron Skillet Biscuits

Author: Queen Of The Red Double Wide adapted this recipe from crunchyrock.com

Serves: 10

Ingredients

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 tablespoon sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon baking soda
¼ cup butter
1¼ cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 cup flour

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees
Stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a mixing bowl.
With a pastry blender, or your hands, cut the butter into the flour mixture until the butter is about the size of peas.
Add the buttermilk to the mixture and stir just until combined, then let it sit for a few minutes.
In a separate bowl place the additional 1 cup of flour.
Scoop about ¼ cup of biscuit mixture out and gently toss it in the flour. Lightly shake off excess flour and place it in a greased 10 inch cast iron skillet.
Continue with the other biscuits, you will end up with about 10 biscuits.
Pour the additional 2 tablespoons of melted butter over the biscuits.
Bake for 16-18 minutes.

Note: This recipe is for a 10 inch skillet and mine is a 12 inch. That’s why the biscuits look so small in the pan. 🙂 If you don’t have a cast iron skillet you can use a cake pan.

This recipe also works using 1 cup of all purpose flour and 1 cup whole wheat flour instead of 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour.

Baked Whole Wheat Pancakes

25 September, 20133 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 13 Comments

One of my sisters sent me a baked pancake recipe the other day via Pinterest. What a brilliant idea!! As I mentioned before in my German Puff Pancake post I really dislike standing at the oven flipping pancakes FOREVER….while half of the family eats and the other half waits for a pancake. There are times though that you just need a good ol’ fluffy pancake and we’ve been loving my Fluffy Whole Wheat Pancake recipe. As I slowly bounced this idea of baked pancakes around in my brain…I thought, why can’t I bake my own pancake recipe? That would be the best of both worlds, a pancake that I already know we like and no flipping or waiting involved. 🙂

So I mixed up a batch of Fluffy Whole Wheat Pancakes.

Poured the batter into a greased 13X9 inch pan.

Baked it at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too?

This got a thumbs up from everyone around here, including Uncle Tom. 😀

Pear Smoothies – A Healthy Fall Treat!

8 September, 20133 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 33 Comments

Fall is in the air!

On our way home from a shopping trip my mom and I stopped at a fruit stand. Everything looked soooo good (I love this time of year)! After some debating I settled on a box of pears and a box of apples. The pears were really ripe and by the next morning I thought the fruit flies were going to pick up my kitchen and fly away. I quickly started a big batch of pear butter (I’ll share that recipe later) and then I froze a bunch to use in future smoothies. What was left, nicely fit in the fridge and we are still enjoying fresh pears and fall smoothies. After putting up a couple fly strips, my kitchen is now (mostly) fly free again!

Here are two wonderful, healthy fall smoothies!

Cinnamon Pear Smoothie

All you need is: 2 pears (cored and quartered) – 1 frozen banana (cut into pieces) – 1 cup of milk (any kind) – 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt – 1/2 cup oatmeal – 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon – a pinch of nutmeg.

Put everything in a blender and puree until nice and smooth. This makes enough for 3 of us to have a nice size smoothie.

Apple and Pear Smoothie

You will need: 1 ripe pear (cored and quartered) – 2 apples (cored, peeled and cut into pieces) – 1 frozen banana (peeled & cut into pieces) – 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt – 1/2 cup of apple juice – 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Throw it all in the blender and puree until smooth.

These make a healthy breakfast or snack….it’s like fall in a cup!

The Queen Of The Red Double Wide adapted these recipes from: AllRecipes.com and Good Food Channel

Healthy Homemade Blueberry Muffins

7 August, 20132 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 14 Comments

Berries seem to be everywhere right now, and muffins are a weakness of mine so we’ve been eating lots of them lately. A couple weeks ago I shared a Fresh Raspberry Muffin recipe that used our homegrown raspberries. The girls and I made several batches, but now the bushes are pretty much picked clean. Sadly we don’t have any blueberry bushes (yet), but I did find some for a very good price the other day so I bought LOTS! I found this blueberry muffin recipe about a month ago and they looked sooooo delicious I couldn’t wait to try them! I made a few minor alterations to the recipe and oh yum, yum, yum!

In a big bowl stir together the milk (any kind will work), melted butter or coconut oil, egg, vanilla and sugar. Then mix in the flour, baking power, and salt.

Gently fold in the blueberries. We used fresh berries but frozen would work too. Fill greased muffin tins two thirds full (this makes about 10 muffins). Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.

They went really well with my iced coffee. 😀

Healthy Homemade Blueberry Muffins

Author: Queen Of The Red Doublewide adapted this recipe from Angela at Hickory Trails

Cuisine: For breakfast or a snack

Serves: 10

Ingredients

¾ cup milk - any kind of milk will work
¼ cup melted butter or coconut oil or olive oil if you prefer
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla extract
⅓ cup organic sugar or sucanat
¾ cup unbleached all purpose flour
¾ cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon sea salt
1 cup blueberries fresh or frozen

Instructions

Stir together the milk, butter, egg, vanilla, and sugar. When it's nice and smooth mix in the flours, baking powder, and salt. Then gently fold in the blueberries. Fill greased muffin tins about two thirds full. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. This will make about 10 muffins and can easily be doubled if you want more.

I’m going to make a dairy free version of these for my mom and sister by using almond milk and coconut oil. I love recipes that you can easily substitute ingredients for people with allergies!

This recipe was adapted from Angela at Hickory Trails. She took some amazing pictures of her muffins; you should check out her blog!

Fresh Raspberry Breakfast Muffins

24 July, 20134 March, 2018 ~ Grace ~ 36 Comments

This recipe has been moved to our new blog SufficientAcres.com. Click here or on the picture to take you to the recipe.

An easy breakfast or healthy snack with berries strait from the garden….yummmm!

Fluffy Whole Wheat Pancakes From Scratch

26 May, 20131 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 53 Comments

These super fluffy, slightly sweet pancakes are absolutely delicious!

Pancakes are another one of those things I have never made from scratch before recently. I always used the mix that you just add water to. It was easy, but if I had known how good from scratch pancakes could taste I would have never bought those mixes!

My first few attempts at “from scratch” pancakes turned out horrible! I wanted healthy (well at least healthier than the store bought mix) but I also wanted yummy…..and I thought for a while there was no such thing! Then I found this recipe and tweaked it slightly. It takes longer than the store bought mixes, but it’s WELL worth it!

Your first step is to combine the milk and vinegar and let it sit for 10 minutes. This will sour the milk but don’t worry, you won’t be able to taste the vinegar, I promise! Mix together the dry ingredients in another bowl.

Then whisk the eggs, melted butter, and vanilla into the soured milk. Pour the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and stir well; it will be thick.

Let the batter sit for 10 minute while the pan heats up. Lots of bubbles will form during that time…DON’T stir the batter again, the bubbles will give you super fluffy pancakes.

Place 1/4 to a half of a cup of batter in a buttered pan at medium low heat. When you see bubbles appear on the surface of the pancake, flip it over and brown the other side. This recipe made 10 – 6inch pancakes. They are very filling; so if you want, you could easily cut the recipe in half if you don’t need that many.

I haven’t tried it yet but I think these would be wonderful with chocolate chips or blueberries!!

4.9 from 11 reviews

Fluffy Whole Wheat Pancakes

Makes 10 fluffy pancakes

Author: Queen Of The Red Doublewide

Cuisine: Breakfast

Ingredients

1½ cups milk
¼ cup vinegar
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
¼ cup sugar - I use sucanat or organic sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 eggs
4 tablespoons melted butter
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions

Combine Milk and vinegar and let set for 10 minutes.
In a separate bowl mix together flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Whisk together the eggs, melted butter and vanilla then pour into the soured milk.
Stir well and pour mixture into the dry ingredients. Whisk until most of the lumps are gone, but don't over beat it. It will be pretty thick, let it sit for 10 minutes. Bubbles will form during that time, don't stir the batter, you want the bubbles.
Gently dip out ¼ to a half of a cup of batter and place it on a buttered grill preheated to medium low heat. When bubbles form at the surface of the pancake turn it over to brown the other side.
Top with butter and syrup or your favorite pancake topping!

The Perfect Eggs for Breakfast Sandwiches

6 May, 20131 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 18 Comments

I know, I know, you’ve all seen this trick of cooking eggs in muffins tins. It’s a great idea, don’t you think? Our family has been enjoying these allot! The only thing I do differently is cook them in a JUMBO muffin tin. They are bigger around and fit PERFECTLY on English muffins and biscuits.

Crack eggs into jumbo muffin cups (grease them first) add salt and pepper and bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes and you have the perfect eggs for those yummy breakfast sandwiches.

Here are some that we’ve been enjoying….the possibilities are endless!!

This is a toasted, sour dough English muffin with cheddar cheese, bacon and a perfect egg!

Click here for an easy, mess free way to cook bacon!

This is a toasted, whole wheat English muffin with egg and cheese. I had to make my 8 year old stop eating so I could get this picture. She wasn’t very patient for some reason??

This is a homemade whole wheat biscuit with a sausage patty made with my homemade breakfast sausage seasoning and a perfect egg!