Banana Pancakes with Maple Rum Syrup

Move over banana bread and make way for the banana bread pancakes! With maple rum syrup, of course.

This is one of those times where you smack your forehead and realize that you have unthinkingly lived never-you-mind how many years on this earth without putting bananas in your pancake batter.

Literally hundreds of bananas have traveled through my kitchen, and while we’ve been very happy with the banana bread and the banana muffins, we’ve been missing out on the banana pancakes.

So to make up for lost time, I made them for dinner the other night…with maple rum syrup on the side. Can you say dessert for dinner?

See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities and nutritional information.

Here’s how to make this recipe

Obviously to start with you need some bananas.

Not pretty cheery yellow ones like these…you need the brown squishy ones. I know you have some, or will have some soon.

Mush them up well with a fork, and then add them to pancake batter…I make my pancakes with buttermilk and flour and sugar and the other usual suspects. This batter is going to be a little thicker than your usual pancake batter, because of the bananas.

The pancakes also need to be cooked at a lower heat than usual, because the bananas are going to add a little more sugar and that means the outside will brown faster. So have your electric griddle on medium low heat, or your stove top skillet if that’s what you are using.

Now, you can of course use regular maple syrup on these babies, but you can also kick things up a notch by adding a little brown sugar and cinnamon and rum and butter to the party.

Stir it all together in a little saucepan and simmer it for about 5 minutes. After you’ve used it on your banana pancakes, you can use the rest on vanilla ice cream, or drizzled over apple cake, or probably a million other things that haven’t occurred to me yet but will.

Recipe FAQs

Can I leave out the rum?

You can! You can either use good old regular maple syrup, or you can add a teaspoon of rum extract to the syrup mixture.

Yipes, I don’t have buttermilk? Now what?

Buttermilk is actually pretty easy to make – here’s an overview from the grest Tastes Better From Scratch website.

Can these be made ahead?

Kinda! If you are expecting a crowd and want to have these ready ahead of time, you can make them and then put them on a cookie sheet in a 200 degree oven to keep warm until you are ready to serve them up.

Have a question that I didn’t cover?

Leave your question (or comment or suggestion) in the Comments box below the recipe and I will answer pronto!

But first I’m going to slather it all over my scrumptious banana pancakes.

Stack of banana rum pancakes on a plate.

So the next time you find yourself with a handful of elderly bananas, give banana pancakes a whirl. You’ll never look at pancakes the same way again!