How do I love pancakes? Let me count the ways. I love pancakes, first and foremost, because they give me an excuse to eat cakes for breakfast. Or dinner. Secondly, nothing makes me giddy like the sight of a plate of pancakes, piled high. Leisurely mornings are celebration-worthy occurrences, are they not? They deserve pancakes. Lastly, I love fluffy, whole wheat pancakes like these because they hold me over until lunchtime, unlike donuts or pastries. Hold the pastries, pass the pancakes.
I haven’t been able to get these carrot cake pancakes off my mind since I saw them in the Joy the Baker Cookbook. I really love Joy the Baker. Why? Because one day she posts cheesecake, and the next, kale and quinoa cakes. She bakes birthday cakes for her cat, Jules, and then unabashedly tells the world about it. Even Cookie doesn’t get birthday cake. Plus, her hilarious podcasts keep me company while I work at home. I pretty much feel like we’re friends, so when she published her first cookbook, I had to have it immediately. It is, as the cover says, a celebration of butter and sugar, but these pancakes stood out because they’re low in both of those ingredients and still incredible.
Joy’s recipe was not my first attempt at making carrot cake pancakes, but her recipe turned out perfectly whereas the first recipe left me with fat, chewy pancakes. In my first attempt, I used my food processor to grate the carrots but it didn’t grate the carrots finely enough. The pancakes ended up sort of dense and almost crunchy. It makes sense if you think about it, because the carrots in actual carrot cake have over 30 minutes to break down in the oven but pancakes are cooked for less than 5 minutes.
The carrot conundrum was the one thing keeping me from making these pancakes, but lo and behold, Deb of Smitten Kitchen posted Joy’s carrot cake pancakes along with her carrot grating advice. Deb suggested grating the carrots by hand with a fine grater instead of using the food processor, which didn’t quite satisfy me but got me thinking about other potential solutions. (Hand grating requires far more energy than I possess before breakfast.) I had a few ideas on how to bypass the problem, and fortunately my first attempt using the easiest method worked great. I used my food processor’s grating blade to grate carrots as usual, and then I swapped in the all-purpose blade and pulsed the carrots a few times. Voila! Finely grated carrots made with minimal effort.
Considering that two of my favorite food bloggers love these pancakes, I was not surprised to find that I do, too. They are decadent and delicious, while being full of carrots and in my version, whole grains as well. What’s not to love? I suggest you make them this weekend.
- 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 egg
- 2 tablespoons packed Muscovado sugar or brown sugar
- 1 cup buttermilk*
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups finely grated carrots (about 6 big or 8 smallish carrots)**
- butter, for griddle
- 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 2 tablespoons real maple syrup
- 2 tablespoons milk (more or less depending on desired consistency)
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Dash of ground cinnamon
- Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit so you can keep the pancakes warm before serving. Spoon the cream cheese into a bowl and leave it out at room temperature to soften.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.
- In a smaller bowl, whisk together the egg, Muscovado/brown sugar, buttermilk and vanilla.
- Stir in the carrots, then dump the wet mixture into the dry mixture all at once. Stir just until incorporated. Let the mixture rest for 5 minutes while you make the cream cheese topping and preheat your griddle/skillet.
- Whisk the cream cheese in a small bowl until it is uniformly soft and pliable, with no lumps. If your cream cheese is not soft enough yet to do this, try zapping it in the microwave for just a few seconds at a time. Whisk in the maple syrup, milk, vanilla and cinnamon. Feel free to sweeten with more syrup or further thin it out further with more milk. Set aside.
- Over medium heat, melt a big pat of butter in a cast-iron skillet or griddle. Pour a scant 1/4 cup batter into the hot pan, using the measuring cup to pat the batter down and out a bit. Cook, flipping once, until the pancakes are golden on both sides.
- Place pancakes on an ovenproof plate and keep in the oven while you cook the remaining pancakes, adding more butter to the pan as needed. Top with maple cream cheese and serve with extra maple syrup on the side, in case someone wants to sweeten it up further.
- Adapted from the Joy the Baker Cookbook
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- Yields 11 to 12 medium pancakes.
- These pancakes freeze well!
- *Make your own buttermilk by combining 1 cup milk with 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Let it sit for 5 minutes then proceed as directed.
- **If you have a food processor with a grating attachment, grate the carrots using the grating attachment. Then replace the grating attachment with your regular multipurpose blade. Pulse the carrots up to 10 times, until they are finely grated finely but not mush (see photo above).
- Pancakes cooked in cast iron skillets taste the best, just saying. Get yourself one!























43 Comments
I freaking love this idea! My favorite cake into a breakfast food! HELLO!
I’ve had carrot cake pancakes on the brain for awhile now — so interesting about grating the carrots super fine, I wouldn’t have thought of that and I’m sure my first attempt would have been crunchy too :)
I have this sneaking suspicion my boyfriend and I may be having pancakes for breakfast tomorrow morning…
Aaaand we did indeed have them for breakfast, and they were wonderful. :D Even my boyfriend, who’s not always the biggest fan of the idea of healthy alternatives to his favourite foods, wolfed them down. Fantastic recipe :) I loved how light and fluffy they turned out, and the cream cheese made a great topping.
Just wondering – do you think they’d work with fruit rather than with the carrot? I’d be curious to try some different flavour combinations, and I was wondering if you thought this would be an adaptable base recipe.
Hey Bec, so happy you two enjoyed the pancakes! Thanks for commenting to let me know! I am not a baking expert by any means, but I am always searching for those perfect whole grain base recipes. I compared Joy’s recipe for carrot cake pancakes to her recipe for blackberry orange pancakes and the liquid and dry measurements are just the same. Please give some other fruit a try and let us know how your pancakes turn out. I think they will be delicious with almost anything!
These look delicious, I love carrot cake & wouldn’t mind an excuse to eat a form of it for breakfast!
What a great idea! I’ve never tried this but now have it on my list for this weekend. I notice you stipulate the use of real maple syrup for the cream…my own suggestion to kick this up a notch would be to use pure organic maple syrup…the taste is so much better that regular and is healthier. Organic mapke syrup can be tough to find sometimes so if they don’t have it at your grocery store get it online like i do….I get it from http://www.rougemaple.com. I also would drizzle some on top of the pancakes, after all whats pancakes without maple syrup…but Then again I’m a maple syrup fanatic.
I love pancakes too Kathryne, so much! Such a wonderful recipe here from Joy the Baker, and you’ve made them look amazing my lady, it’s 2am-worthy, good looking (starving!) Ps. Are you getting excited for your trip or what? :) Will be in touch soon, yay! xx!
Beautiful, i love carrot muffins and cake, I’ll do the pancakes for sure!
yum, never had carrot cake pancakes, I do love carrot cake though!
I like Joy for the very same reasons you do. Her food is comfort, no fail, and delicious! Did you read her latest post about turning 31? I loved it! Deb’s food is awesome too. So the combination of both techniques from these two should be lovely, right? I always have carrots on hand and would love to try these pancakes soon!
These look fabulous, Kathryne! Thanks for the tip about grating the carrots–makes total sense. And that maple cream cheese topping looks absolutely decadent. I’m getting together with an old pancake-loving friend soon and think I’ll try these out on her. Oh, the things I’ll do for a friendship… :-)
whole wheat carrot cake pancakes.. what a brilliant breakfast idea!! i love delicious whole wheat recipes… will defi try this one!!
Love this! We buy organic carrots in bulk at Costco and I’m always looking for a way to use them.
I have really been meaning to get to making these since I got the Joy cookbook. I love her for a gazillion reasons, most of which you mentioned, and also because she is so sweet in real life! Love it when that happens.
These were absolutely AMAZING. I adjusted the recipe slightly (for one!) and only used: 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour, 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, a pinch of ginger and nutmeg, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1/2 cup of buttermilk and 2 small grated carrots and it they turned out literally gorgeous! So much so that I was literally eating each one as soon as I flipped it out the skillet! I ended up making 4 thick, medium-sized pancakes, and they definitely fill you up – not that that stopped me!
Yay, so glad to hear you enjoyed the pancakes! Reducing the recipe for one was a smart move. I’m almost always cooking for myself and tend to make big batches of everything… when will I ever learn?!
Made the pancakes for brunch today. Followed the recipe except for using FF whipped cream cheese for the topping and skimmed milk where milk was listed, because it’s what we had. The batter was a little thinner than expected, but made fabulous pancakes just the same. We used an electric griddle. I expect we will be making these again and again! Thank you!
So happy you enjoyed the pancakes, Sue! Thank you for commenting!
I’ve made these 6 times since getting my hands on the recipe – a breakfast celebration indeed!
Nice! I made 3 batches while I was playing around with this recipe, trying to get it just right. I’ve had my fill of carrots and cream cheese for a while!
Those look ah-may-zing! And what are the chances– I have all the ingredients on hand! Looks like it’s going to be a happy Monday morning. Thanks for sharing.
This is one recipe I am going to want to try. Thank you.
I love that you’ve used whole wheat pastry flour. It has fast become my flour of choice. It makes for a lighter texture in baked goods, doesn’t it? I would never have thought to make carrot pancakes, but what a terrific idea!
These look really tasty. I have never been a fan of plain pancakes but might just enjoy these thanks to all the carrots in it.
Wow! I love the idea of using carrots in pancakes! I love my carrots, but usually just eat them raw or juice them.
Mind if I borrow the recipe and make it egg and dairy free (and give you credit for where I saw it first)?
Have a great day!
I saw this in Joy the Baker’s cookbook too and it’s still bookmarked to make. Your version looks absolutely amazing, and it’s really making me want to make this ASAP, maybe even tonight!
I have been dying to try these too! (just like everyone else here…:) )
But your pictures make them look even more appetizing. Looks delicious.
Yes! I love carrot cake. I love pancakes. Three of my favorite bloggers love these carrot cake pancakes so will probably love them too!
YUM! how do you reheat these after freezing? does the toaster work best?
Delicious! I have some ww-fruit pancake batter in the fridge right now. But it’s not carrot cake pancake batter. Which means I must make more pancakes. :D
I reaally like this recipe! And I’m totally enjoying all your other pancake recipes!
I wish I had seen this recipe earlier. I tried out another carrot cake pancake recipe and it was a flop. This one turned out great! I had some walnuts laying around, so I toasted them and added them on top. Thanks for sharing the recipe.
Sorry for the delayed response, Riley, but I’m so happy to hear that you enjoyed the pancakes! Walnuts sound like a terrific addition.
holy pancakes! those look so INCREDIBLE!! pancakes are good for the soul:) thanks for sharing
These sound fantastic. I wonder if I could replace the whole wheat flour with a mixture of buckwheat and gluten-free flour though? I’m going to try…
That’s a great question, Fiona. Please let me know how the pancakes turn out if you try it!
Great idea. We make pancakes almost 3 times a week. This sounds like a delicious variation!!!
Great post! I’ve been eye-balling those pancakes also since I picked up Joy’s cookbook, but I find myself returning over and over to the always simple “Single Lady Pancakes.” Glad to encounter a fellow podcast listener out in the world! Thanks for sharing!
This recipie is one of the best i’ve ever tried. My family and i loved it so much. Thanks for this awesome recipie.
So happy to hear it, Tippiny! Thank you for commenting to let me know.
I love your banana oat pancakes. Could you sub in oat flour for the whole wheat pastry flour?
Sorry Whitney, I haven’t tried! If you give it a try, please let me know how they turn out. I did, however, try substituting carrots for the banana in the banana oat pancakes recipe and they turned out pretty dry. Maybe you could do half bananas and half carrots, or add a little yogurt to make up for the lost moisture of the bananas?
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