Orange Dream Pancakes

It has been a while since I made pancakes.  I am not sure exactly why, but I ended up taking a hiatus from them.  But now we are back on breakfast terms, and boy were they delicious this morning.

Dreamsicles used to be my favorite ice cream treat.  To this day I adore orange flavored ice cream with creamy swirls, orange cream flavored candy, etc.  I had purchased some navel oranges from Meijer, eaten one of them yesterday and was going to eat the other today.

Then, one thing led to another and it ended up in a pancake! I'll take it. 

You will need: The zest of an orange, as much as you can get off of it, the juice of that orange, mine came to between 1/3-1/2 of a cup, 1/4 cup of milk or orange juice (OJ if you have it, I did not so I used milk), 1 c of pancake mix (I use Krusteaz), and a good 3 second or so squirt of honey.  Optional inclusions are 1/2 tsp of orange extract (Did not use and do not have), and white chocolate chips (did use and have some leftover, yummy).

I put my mix into a bowl and started zesting my orange.  Once I had gotten the majority of the zest off it without getting down to the rind, I cut it in half and squeezed the juice into the bowl.  I added 1/4 c of milk and mixed it around, then added a dash more because it did not look liquid enough.  Next, I put in the honey after tasting it because it was a little tangy.  Next, I used a meat pounder and broke the white chocolate M&M's into smaller pieces.  I had these candy corn colored ones leftover from Halloween time, so that is what I used. 

Once that was all mixed, I buttered my griddle, put out 1/4 cup of batter to make 6 pancakes, and cooked them a couple minutes on each side.  I like to flip mine and then smoosh them down with my spatula.  I am not sure why.  Random factoid.

I put REAL MAPLE syrup on them (as it is the only thing I will use), and oh boy they were delicious!  You could add orange extract if you wanted a stronger flavor, or orange food coloring if you wanted them to look just so, but overall I was really happy with how these turned out without either of those.  If you took softened cream cheese, maybe a little bit of milk, some powdered sugar if need be, and made a cream cheese drizzle for these it would also be stellar.  I just really did not feel like doing that...it was still way too early.

They have put my Monday off to a great start!