Twitter avatar fun: Mark Bittman's pancakes!

banana pancakes

Nancy came up with the brilliant idea for us to choose a new chef each month, bake recipes from that chef, and use a picture of one of those recipes for our Twitter avatar. It took me forever to settle on a chef for my month (October). Finally, looking through my cookbooks, I decided on Mark Bittman. I'd won his How to Cook Everything in a silent auction last July, and I wanted an excuse to start using it.

Suddenly it's my month, and I realized that in the past almost-year since I selected him, I've begun cooking from Mark Bittman a lot. I use his How to Cook Everything for reference all of the time. He offers so many basics with so many fun variations that you feel like you're creating your own recipe. His book was especially helpful this summer, as I tried to figure out what to do with all of our CSA veggies. Also, Mark Bittman has started writing a Less Meat, More Flavor column for Cooking Light, one of my essential cooking magazines, and we've tried a bunch of those recipes this year. And I've started following him on Twitter, so I now get links to his NYT recipes and articles.

Today, on the way home from preschool, I suggested pancakes for dinner. My kids (who always request pancakes when given the dinner choice) were ecstatic. Suddenly, my little guy said, "What about banana pancakes with chocolate chips?" (Where do they come up with these things?) Usually, we eat buttermilk pancakes with blueberries (using ATK's recipe). So I said, "Sure, I could give that a try."

When we got home, I turned to my trusty HTCE, and sure enough, he had a recipe for incorporating bananas into pancakes!

These were less fluffy than our usual buttermilk pancakes, but they were really yummy. The regular pancakes had just a hint of banana flavor, and with the addition of the chocolate chips, they were a huge hit and a definite repeat. Even hubby ate his without syrup!

secret ingredient: chocolate chips!

Banana chocolate chip pancakes
adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

makes 16 medium pancakes
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 large banana
mini chocolate chips

1. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
2. Combine the melted butter, eggs, and milk. Mash the banana and add it to the liquid ingredients.
3. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry, being sure not to whisk too much (you want some lumps in the batter).
4. Pour batter (in 1/4 cup increments) onto a hot griddle (we use an electric griddle, although you could cook them on the stovetop on a griddle with butter). Sprinkle some mini chips on the pancakes and cook until bubbles form on the top and the bottoms are golden. Flip and continue to cook until the other side is also golden.
5. Serve.

According to Mark Bittman, the batter can be made a day or two ahead of time and stored in the fridge until ready to use.