You Only Need 2 Ingredients For Sweet Potato Pancakes

A warm stack of pancakes is a Sunday morning classic, but you can turn your favorite breakfast into a more nutritious and easy-to-make meal by subbing in sweet potato. Even a simple classic pancake recipe requires quite a few ingredients, such as flour, milk, baking powder, and egg. But by switching to a sweet potato version, you can make delicious, sweet or savory flapjacks using just two ingredients: sweet potatoes and eggs.

The only tradeoff is that you will need to cook your sweet potato ahead of time so that it turns soft and can easily fold in your eggs. This can be done in the oven, but if you want to speed up the process, pop the potatoes in the microwave for about five minutes. From there, mash up the insides, combine them with one egg per potato, and cook them on a skillet as you normally would. 

Not only will your finished product look like typical pancakes (with a more orangish tint), but they'll taste sweet even before you add any toppings. During cooking, the sweet potatoes batter will caramelize and turn your flapjacks crispy on the outside. Since they have both starch and sugar, all they need is an egg to act as a structuring and rising agent. 

While the short ingredient list will cut down on trips to the grocery store, the — not so much tricky as unexpected — part of making these pancakes may be mashing the potatoes. Of course, you can just use a masher or fork, but since you're going to be mixing in an egg anyway, simplify the process even more by throwing both ingredients in the blender after you've cooked, cooled, and peeled your potato. If you're working with a nonstick pan, you don't need any fat on the griddle before you pour your mixture, but a pat of butter will help the outsides get extra crispy.

Just as with regular pancakes, you're going to want to cook these for about three minutes on each side — though this batter won't bubble when ready, so check the undersides for browning before flipping. While these flapjacks are delicious on their own (and with all the toppings that ensue), you can zhuzh them up even more with a few simple pantry ingredients. Adding cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, or vanilla extract into the blender will make your stack taste like fall, and garlic powder, onion powder, or pepper will turn it into a savory treat.