Double Chocolate Brownie Batter Pancakes

Ok, let’s face it – these are really triple chocolate, not double chocolate.  They can be toned down to double chocolate if you can’t take the in-your-face chocolatelyness of these good-morning-beauties…but…why?  Let me tell you how we got to this point…

During the week, I have a Big Girl Corporate Job downtown.  Big Girl Corporate Job downtown = daily commutes in traffic.  This means that between showering, getting make-up on, doing my hair, finding a cute professional outfit that I haven’t worn in the past week (the struggle is real), nursing Liesl, packing a lunch for myself AND for 2 kids…cereal and milk (eaten while preparing lunches) is about as fancy as my weekday breakfasts get.  Unless I want to get super fancy.  Then it’s toast with peanut butter and honey.  Eaten in the car while I listen to NPR on my way downtown.  Super fancy.

Yep.

This means that on Saturday mornings, before my eyes are even fully adjusted to the daylight, my laptop is on my lap in bed and my fingers are typing “www.pinterest.com” and navigating to my “Top of the Morning” board, looking for some delicious treat to whip up and call dessert breakfast.

In pursuit of a delicious weekend breakfast a couple years ago, I stumbled upon this adorable blog called “Chocolate Covered Katie”.  The concept is ingenious:  Create super-healthified versions of our favorite indulgent, totally unhealthy desserts.  And we’re not talking about just substituting a cup of whole-wheat flour for white flour, or swapping out full-fat sour cream for lowfat sour cream.  We’re talking substituting chick peas for flour and butter in chocolate-chip cookies, dates for butter and eggs in brownies, spelt flour for normal flour in pancakes…If you’re gluten-free, dairy-free, refined-sugar-free, or vegan, this is the site for you!

I seriously love the idea of her blog (eat MORE treats and feel LESS guilty?  Deal!), so I started trying out some recipes.  One of the first recipes I tried was her Brownie Batter Pancakes.  I loved them – they reminded me of the hundreds of Chocolate Waffle Cookies I ate with my family during our weekly “Family Home Evenings”.  I drizzled them with some chocolate syrup and…yum.  Justified dessert for breakfast.  Hello, weekend.

I was super excited to make them for Nick!  He doesn’t love sweet, bready things in the morning (dagger to my heart!), but I figured I could get him excited about chocolate on chocolate!  He liked them fine, but wasn’t super stoked about them.  What?!  But I loved them, so kept making them, trying various recipe modifications to fit our tastes, and voila – emerges a perfectly fluffy, chocolately brownie pancake breakfast for your family!  They’re not quite as “healthy” as Katie’s (sorry, Katie!), but will definitely fulfill your 8:30 am chocolate craving on a Saturday morning!

If you’re going for the Chocolate Triple Crown, you can add in chocolate chips (I’ll say that’s optional; Nick will disagree) and top them with chocolate syrup (like Hershey’s chocolate syrup ice cream topping, or my favorite homemade chocolate syrup recipe).  They’re also awesome topped with raspberry syrup – or try raspberries with a drizzle of the chocolate syrup, or bananas with some melted peanut butter.  If you’re not into super-sweet breakfasts, a dusting of powdered sugar would be perfect.

Oh, and definitely a kid pleaser.  Like, slam dunk on this one.  Trust me.

So if you’re up this fine Saturday morning, scanning Pinterest in bed for a new yummy weekend breakfast recipe – give this one a try!