Carrot Cake Pancakes

Cara, I think you're going to like this one. It's about breakfast between friends!

One of the perks of bring in grad school and working irregular hours,  is that I can have friends come over for breakfast before an afternoon class.  Today Aimee rode her bike over so we could make carrot cake pancakes !  What a treat to have a friend over to start the week! I love meeting friends for coffee at Des Moines' wonderful local coffee shops, however, for me there are times when having a friend over so you can cook together cannot be beat.  Especially when that friend is a fellow food enthusiast.  When planning our breakfast, Aimee wrote in an e mail "Do we think about food too much?"  To which I responded,  "Yes and there's nothing wrong with that!" 

We followed the recipe, almost exactly but instead used vanilla almond milk (rather thank plain) and substituted canola oil for a delicious walnut oil.  These pancakes (which happen to be vegan, if you're into that kind of thing) had a spicy, nutty flavor.  They were light and fluffy (perhaps due to a pleasant bubbling that occurred upon adding the wet ingredients to the dry) and not too sweet. 

I do not love carrot cake, the cake version. It's often too dense and too sweet and the cream cheese frosting that is usually on top is just over kill in my opinion (recall... I don't like frosting very much, period.) This was a nice substitute. So, if you're ever thinking of making me a carrot cake, just make me carrot pan-cakes instead.