Birthday Pancakes and Strawberry Sauce

Weekends just keep getting shorter and shorter and with the days getting nicer it's even harder to hold on to the weekend.

I visited a couple friends this weekend for their birthdays and conveniently it was also the weekend of my high school's 50th Anniversary. We visited the school and wandered the halls looking in our old classrooms and hangouts. Surprisingly the school was quite empty so we didn't run into any old friends or teachers. It was a little odd to be honest but fun none the less. Luckily I had a great high school experience so I can walk down those halls and look back fondly. Not much has changed there, that's for sure.

I made my friends a special birthday breakfast on Saturday morning. It was very appropriate for a birthday and was a good excuse to eat dessert for breakfast.

First I'll tease you with the topping. Strawberry sauce!

This took 10 minutes to make and was delicious! Simple slice or chop a pint of strawberries and heat in a sauce pan with sugar and vanilla. I made this the night before we needed it so I just microwaved it in the morning to serve warm.

So what was the main attraction? Pancakes of course!

I've been seeing a lot of recipes out there with sprinkles and cake mix to I decided to get on the bandwagon and try my hand at birthday pancakes.

These pancakes are almost as easy as using a pancakes mix, they just require a couple more ingredients and a little bit of love and fun.

As if sprinkles weren't enough I also made some with chocolate chips!

And the only thing missing is whipped cream. But the icing sugar glaze I whipped up made up for it. I'm not sure any of us used maple syrup. These beauties were sweet enough!

Strawberry Sauce

1 pint strawberries chopped

1/3 cup sugar

1t vanilla

1t corn starch 

In a saucepan over medium high heat, combine all ingredients. Cook, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.  Added a couple freshly sliced strawberries after the others were cooked to make sure I had a few big chunks of berries. They softened up in the already cooked berries.

Birthday Pancakes

1.5 cups white flour
2/3 cup french vanilla cake mix
1T sugar
3/4t baking powder
pinch of salt
2 eggs
1t vanilla
1.5 cups milk
sprinkles (lots!)

Combine the dry ingredients and mix. In another bowl wish together the eggs and vanilla then add to the dry mix. Slowly add 1 cup of milk until smooth adding more milk as needed. It will look just like regular pancake batter. Once smooth fold in as many sprinkles as your heart desires and spoon onto your frying pan (I was luck enough to use my friends electric frying pan, *swoon). Cook on one side until the top bubble a little, then flop onto the other side for another minute.

Serve with your favourite toppings like whipped cream, chocolate sauce, vanilla glaze, strawberries, bananas, even ice cream and more sprinkles!

Here's a little hint of what's coming later this week...