sunday breakfast-- whole wheat pumpkin pancakes

Tomorrow tens of thousands of spandex clad runners will flood the streets of Boston for the 114th Boston Marathon-- so in honor of them, I carb loaded this morning in preparation for the event :)
It's Sunday morning, and I made a hefty stack of pumpkin pancakes. I start with a box of Aunt Jemima Whole Wheat blend pancakes as the base, but when I make them I substitute some of the ingredients in their classic pancake recipe for ingredients more to my liking, and I cut the recipe in half. Their recipe calls for milk, an egg, and oil. I like to use either soy or almond milk, an egg white, and I typically substitute applesauce for the oil. Applesauce is a 1:1 fat substitute, meaning if a recipe calls for 1 tbsp oil or butter, you can replace it with 1 tbsp applesauce. Pureed pumpkin is also a 1:1 fat substitution, but I used more than called for in this recipe to get more pumpkin flavor.
I am a blueberry pancake kind of girl, but this morning I decided to mix it up a little bit and add a some spice. This is such an easy recipe, and pancakes are really fun to experiment with; you can put almost anything in a pancake it will go over well. I'd say they're foolproof. So let those creative juices flow and get cooking!
Whole Wheat Pumpkin Pancakes (serves 1 hungry, pancake loving person)
Ingredients:
1/2 cup whole wheat blend pancake mix (unprepared)
1/2 cup vanilla almond milk (or soy milk, cows milk, lactaid etc... use whatcha got!)
1 egg white
1/4 cup pure pureed pumpkin
1 tbsp reduced fat cream cheese
1 dash each-ground cinnamon & nutmeg
cooking spray

Add the pancake mix to a medium sized bowl. Add milk and egg white and mix with a fork. Mix in the pureed pumpkin and the spices. Lastly mix the cream cheese, mashing it with a fork to break it up. Heat a skillet on the stove top to medium heat. Pour the batter into the pan-- you can make them as big or small as you want. when the pancakes batter starts to bubble they are ready to be flipped. Serve with maple syrup and enjoy!

*This recipe yields around 5 4'' pancakes...it is probably closer to 1.5 servings, but to me it was Sunday brunch. The pumpkin and spice flavor was actually really subtle. Next time I think I would add more cinnamon and nutmeg, and maybe toy with the idea of a cream cheese icing, mmm... I hope my few and faithful readers take away this message if nothing else: Don't be afraid to manipulate a recipe, be adventurous! If you think of something that would make a recipe better, try it. What's the worst that could happen?