Peanut Buttered Banana Pancakes

I made these for Erik's dinner the other night (hubby was working late and I knew Erik wouldn't care what we ate so yes, we had pancakes for dinner) and he loved them. I think he ate seven of them. Wouldn't you?

Let's rewind to several months ago, when I was looking around for ideas for things to tempt Erik (he can be super picky!). I found an idea somewhere online (sorry, don't remember where) for banana pancakes. They had you dip banana slices in pancake batter and then cook them in a skillet. I thought this sounded genius and decided to give it a try. It flopped. The batter didn't want to stick to the bananas so it all ran off and left the top exposed. The batter on the side of the slices didn't get cooked well, and it was basically a flop. 

Now, fast forward to now, it's a few minutes to supper time and I've got nothing ready to go. I'm standing in my kitchen and see the box of whole wheat pancake mix I had yet to put away from my grocery trip that afternoon, and it's sitting next to the bunch of bananas on my counter. I think to myself how sad it was that the banana pancakes flopped, and then suddenly the solution pops into my head. Here's the secret:

Start by mixing your desired pancake batter as you would normally do. Put a small amount onto your chosen pancake pan (just like you would normally do, except smaller), you want it to end up being just a tiny bit bigger than a slice of banana. After the batter has cooked a few seconds, place a slice of banana onto each pancake and press down slightly so it's sunk into the batter. Like this:

 Next, place a small dollop of batter atop the banana slice, like this:

When it's ready to flip, just be careful not to mess up your little pancake and banana tower. 

Now, I was trying to decide the best thing to top these with (Erik doesn't know syrup exists. Seriously, why teach my kid that he can drizzle his food with liquid sugar when there are options like PB, applesauce, fruit spreads, etc...) when I realized that there couldn't be anything better than peanut butter. Who doesn't like the banana+PB combo? So, right after I flipped my little pancakes, while the second side was still cooking, I smeared some PB onto each pancake so it'd get warm and gooey. 

 As soon as they were cooked all the way through I took them out of the pan, let them cool a minute or two, and then handed them over to Erik. I just knew it would be love at first bite. I was wrong. He spit it out and looked at me like I'd betrayed him. I thought maybe he didn't like the PB with it, so I scraped it off one bite and tried again. Same reaction. What could have gone wrong, they looked so perfect? I popped one into my mouth to see if I could figure out the problem. HOLY CRAP! MOLTEN HOT BANANA LAVA!!!!!
So apparently it takes about forever for the banana to cool down to a reasonable temperature. So long that the pancake part will be cold (and I do mean cold, not just a little cool) before the banana is edible. At least you get to bite into a warm gooey banana-ey center. Once we got them cooled down Erik loved them and ate a bunch (plus the other half of the banana that I hadn't cooked). I think he'd eat them every day if I would make them for him.