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Kit's Traybake Pancakes (chocolate chip var.)

Heyo! You may have seen my original pancake traybake (cinnamon apple var.) recipe! If you haven’t, come check it out here! If you have, check again, since I’ve made some crucial changes to the cook time/temp/optional prep after much experimentation!

Well, here’s:

Love eating pancakes but hate making them? This traybake pancake recipe may be for you! Making these gives me enough pancake squares for 6 days (5 if you eat two on the day you make them). They reheat well, can either be eaten with or without maple syrup, and are very customizable! I recommend adding something healthy like fruit or yogurt, and protein powder like I do in this recipe, making it a slightly healthier breakfast than just pure carbs.

Full recipe under the cut! (Reader beware, you're in for a... lot of asides and annotations lol)

Full disclosure, the base for this recipe was the mug pancake recipe from Emma’s Goodies, which you can watch here!

I made this mug pancake for years (except with tripled portions because I was using a very big mug) and it was super delicious! However, for just one mug pancake, it was a bit of a production and didn’t feel super worth it. Thusly, I have adapted the recipe to be made in a 13”x9” baking tray, which makes a whole lot of breakfast.

Base Ingredients:

12 tbsp. butter (I use salted, if you don’t have salted butter, add a very small amount of kosher salt to your recipe)

9 tbsp. (1/2 cup+ 1 tbsp) granulated sugar

12 fl.oz. milk (I use skim, use whatever kind you like)

3 cups all-purpose flour

3 tsp. baking powder

Customizable Ingredients:

1 scoop protein powder (I use vanilla flavored whey)

1/4 cup of brown sugar

1 cup (around 5oz) nonfat strawberry Greek yogurt (pick a good quality brand/one you like)

1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips (for the batter)

Small handful of semisweet chocolate chips (to sprinkle on top)

1/2 cup of semisweet chocolate chips, 1 tbsp of butter, ~2 capfuls of milk (for chocolate drizzle)

Base Instructions:

Heat oven to 375°F, take out a 13”x9” nonstick baking pan and spray bottom and sides with cooking spray (yes theoretically I know you don’t need to spray a nonstick pan but better safe than sorry).

Put butter in a bowl and melt it in the microwave. I recommend microwaving for 1m20s.

Put butter in a stand mixer, preferably with the paddle attachment. While you heat the milk in the microwave* (40 seconds, stir milk once it’s done; I use a glass liquid measuring cup for the microwaving), add the granulated sugar to the mixer. Once the milk is heated, add it and use one of the lower settings on your mixer.

(If you have customizable wet ingredients, add them now!)

Add the flour and baking powder, mix again on low setting until it forms a batter (a small amount of lumps is okay from what I’ve heard, you don’t want to overmix).

*You can’t put cold milk into hot butter, it will form little clumps and be gross

Customizable Instructions:

Add the brown sugar (as above, preferably before the flour, with the other wet ingredients. Wait, why is sugar a wet ingredient? see † at the bottom).

Add one scoop of your preferred protein powder, then mix on low setting until it’s mixed in.

Similarly, mix in the strawberry yogurt*. Now, I know what you’re saying: this is a very specific thing to add to the pancakes, but hear me out**: it gives moisture to the recipe (in this version, there’s not as much, cuz there’s no added tea/maple syrup, and there’s an additional dry ingredient), and it adds a subtle fruity flavor (also it makes your living space smell amazing while it’s cooking)! I may experiment with adding actual fresh strawberry to the recipe in the future.

Finally, put the cup of choco chips in and mix gently! My mixer head tends to bump around a little bit during this step so you may want to use that generally ignorable lever that keeps the mixer head secure.

*Unlike the brown sugar, you may want to mix the yogurt in after you add the dry ingredients. If you do it before, it won’t incorporate smoothly and end up in a bunch of gross looking lumps. It doesn’t actually affect anything though and once you add the dry ingredients, everything is fine. It’s more about if you’re a wet before dry purist vs. someone squicked out by lumps.

** It’s also the only thing I had on hand lmao

Chocolate Sauce (for ‘drizzling’) Instructions:

Put 1/2 cup of chocolate chips in the microwave with a tablespoon of butter. Melt for 45 seconds on high (according to the packaging on my choco chip bag). Mix the resulting glorp carefully (it’s hot!) with a rubber spatula then microwave for another 15-20 seconds until most/all of the chips have melted.

Mix again. It will look like a gross dry paste (but trust the process). Once you add in a capful of milk and mix—immediately you will have a glossy beautiful mixture. Then add an additional capful of milk (you may need to add more) to make it thin enough to ‘drizzle’!

Baking Instructions:

Pour batter into greased baking tray and use a spatula and spread it evenly by hand, as this batter is thicker and a little stiffer than my apple version. Optional: Sprinkle the top with that handful of chocolate chips—then if you made the chocolate sauce, take the spatula from before, scoop a little bit of chocolate sauce onto the tip of the spatula, and carefully* flick it over the surface of the batter! Really channel your inner Jackson Pollock! Do as much of this as you want until you have your ideal amount of chocolate drizzle on top (and if you have any left afterward, eat it as a tasty little snack. live deliciously lol).

When the oven reaches temperature (if you preheated it at the beginning, it may have already been at temperature for a while) put the pan in and cook for 35 mins. Know your oven and if it tends to be hotter or colder**, adjust cook time as necessary.

When the timer goes off, test the center in several places with a toothpick. As long as it doesn’t come out goopy, you’re good! (crumbs on the toothpick is fine) I say test in several places because if you accidentally go through a chocolate chip, your toothpick will come out wet and chocolatey, but that doesn’t mean the pancakes aren’t done. If it's not done, cook in intervals of 5 minutes, testing when the timer goes off.

Take pan out and use a butter knife or a pie serving spatula and poke around the edges of the pan to free the pancake traybake from the edges. Let cool for 10 minutes.

Cut into squares. I tend to cut 12 pieces, but you could go smaller or larger depending on how much you intend to eat at once.

*By making this recipe you agree to not hold me liable for any chocolate mess that may result from the flicking process (lol).

** How do I know if my oven runs hot or cold, you may ask? If any recipe you make comes out raw and/or takes longer to cook than the instructions say, your oven is colder! If your food ends up burnt and/or takes less time to cook than the recipe instructions say, your oven is hotter!

Enjoy! I eat two squares at a time and it makes a good breakfast! For storing, put however much of it you can eat in 2-3 days in the fridge. Store the rest in the freezer.

I will note, this version of the recipe doesn't form the same kind of cool thick edges like the apple version.

For any customizing other than what I did, use whatever fruit, spices, syrups, and/or protein powders you want! Just be aware that more fruit in the batter means it may take longer to cook!

If you make them, either the same way I did here or differently, let me know how they came out!

†Yes, all sugars are considered wet ingredients. Yes, it is conceptually weird, but there is a reason: because they need to dissolve in liquid in order to be incorporated properly, you add them in with the wet ingredients. It's like Thompson from Gravity Falls, who's kinda in the friend group but only because he performs a specific social role (poor Thomson tho fr fr)