Black Forest Pancake with Cream Cheese Glaze

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Here is a pancake recipe that I'm sure you're going to love! These pancakes have got three amazing components that are layered that truly resemble the traditional Black Forest cake.

Black Forest is my all-time favorite cake, it would be my number one choice for a birthday cake! I’ve loved Black Forest cake ever since I can remember - it’s been my favorite for my entire life I’m sure! Back in India, I would love to go to bakeries and enjoy a slice of Black Forest cake. I simply adore the rich chocolate, the cream, and sweet cherries in the middle. It’s just a scrumptious combination!

Because I love Black Forest so much I wanted to incorporate this concept into some super tasty pancakes. I’ve made “birthday cake pancakes” with Extremely Fun & Fluffy Funfetti M&M Pancakes, but to me a Black Forest cake is a birthday cake! So this is like making my kind of birthday cake into a pancake! I hadn’t made a chocolate pancake in quite some time, but cocoa pancakes are always the ones I’m really looking forward to making when Pancake Sunday rolls along!

These layered pancakes feature a rich cream cheese glaze and a strawberry purée. These two sauces in addition to some chocolate shavings all meld together in between each pancake to make a superb flavor combination. Be sure to try these pancakes for your next relaxing weekend treat and enjoy!

Making the Chocolate Pancakes

To achieve fluffy chocolate pancakes, we simply just need to add some cocoa powder to the regular pancake batter with oat flour, honey, vanilla extract, baking powder and an egg. The batter will have a mild cocoa flavor. I didn’t add any additional sweetener to the batter with the exception of the usual honey I use because the sweetness will come from the cream cheese glaze and strawberry purée, with extra shaved chocolate on top.

Be sure to whisk the dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately, then combine the two mixtures. Mix well, ensuring that there are no lumps in the batter. You want to form a thick and fluffy batter.

Cooking the Pancakes

Preheat the oven to 200°F. We’ll be transferring cooked pancakes onto a baking sheet and adding them to the oven so that they stay warm while the remaining pancakes cook.

Heat a pan on medium heat. Add some butter. When the pan is hot, use a 1/4 cup measuring cup to scoop out some batter. Your pancakes are ready to flip when you start seeing bubbles on the pancake. This will take about 1-2 minutes. Flip, cook on the other side, and cook for about another minute or so. When the pancake has finished cooking on the other side, use your spatula and transfer the pancake onto a baking tray. Put the tray in the oven to keep the pancake warm. Repeat with the remaining batter.

Making the Strawberry Purée

The topping here will be a strawberry purée combined with my classic cream cheese glaze. To make the strawberry purée, add the strawberries and a bit of water into a blender. Keep blending until the strawberries have been completely blended, and add water if necessary. If your purée is too thin, you can cook it in a pot and reduce the sauce until it reaches the consistency of a thick sauce. The strawberries have a lot of natural sweetness, so you won’t need any additional sugar.

Serving the Black Forest Layered Pancakes

The final step is to grate some chocolate. You can use milk chocolate or dark chocolate, depending on your taste!

When all of the pancakes have finished cooking, put one on a plate. Spoon some of the cream cheese glaze, then the strawberry purée, then the chocolate shavings. Repeat until you’ve reached the top pancake. Serve immediately and enjoy!

Easy Swaps and Variations

Make these layered pancakes your own:

• Use oat flour in place of the all-purpose flour to keep them gluten-free.
• Dutch-process cocoa gives a deeper color and flavor, and carob works too.
• Swap the cream cheese in the glaze for mascarpone or Neufchatel.
• Use maple syrup instead of honey, and make the batter eggless with a flax egg.

Storage, Make-Ahead and Freezing

Keep cooked pancakes warm in a 200 degree F oven while you finish the batch. Store leftover pancakes in an airtight container in the fridge for two to three days, or freeze them in a single layer and then stack with parchment between each one. Reheat in a toaster, microwave, or warm oven. You can make the cream cheese glaze and strawberry puree ahead of time; just assemble the stacks right before serving so the pancakes do not get soggy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Tips for the Best Black Forest Pancakes

These black forest pancakes turn the classic German dessert into a stackable breakfast. Whisk the all-purpose flour, cocoa powder and baking powder into the wet ingredients — milk, egg, honey and vanilla — until you have a thick but runny batter, then cook 1/4 cup at a time in a buttered pan until bubbles form, flipping once. For the layers, blend the strawberries into a quick purée (reduce it in a saucepan if it is too thin), and stir together the cream cheese, powdered sugar and a tablespoon or so of milk for the cream cheese glaze. Stack the warm pancakes with a spread of glaze, a spoon of strawberry purée and a shower of dark chocolate shavings between each layer, finishing the top the same way. Keep cooked pancakes warm in a 200°F oven so the whole dessert comes together hot.

Make It a Classic Black Forest

This layered stack leans on fresh strawberries, but Black Forest traditionally means cherries. A few easy swaps take it in that direction:

• Use cherries in place of the strawberry puree: fresh, frozen, or a good canned cherry pie filling all work.
• Warm the cherries in a saucepan, and for a glossier, thicker sauce, stir in a teaspoon of cornstarch mixed with a little cold water.
• For grown-up servings, a small splash of kirsch (cherry brandy) is the classic Black Forest touch.
• Keep the dark chocolate shavings and cream cheese glaze; they're just as good with cherries.

Tools Needed

• Large bowl
• Mixing bowl
• Whisk
• Nonstick pan
• Measuring cups
• Baking sheet
• Food processor
• Saucepan
• Spatula

Ingredient Notes: Cocoa Powder, Large Eggs and Room Temperature Cream Cheese

The batter is only eight ingredients, but the details matter more than the count. Into a large bowl go one cup of all purpose flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder and 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder. Reach for unsweetened cocoa powder rather than a sweetened drinking-chocolate mix; there is already honey in the batter and a sugared glaze going on top, and sweet cocoa tips the whole stack into cloying. The wet ingredients get whisked separately in a small bowl first, one and a quarter cups of milk, one large egg, a tablespoon of honey and a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and only then get poured into the dry. Whisking them apart is what keeps the batter from going lumpy.

Two teaspoons of butter go into the pan for cooking. I use unsalted butter so the sweetness stays clean, though salted works perfectly well, and it is worth knowing that there is no salt anywhere else in this batter. If you like a little contrast against the cocoa, a pinch stirred into the dry mix does the job. A quarter teaspoon of cinnamon is the other addition worth trying in cold weather; neither is in the recipe as written.

The glaze is five ounces of cream cheese, 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar and three quarters of a tablespoon of milk. Let the cream cheese come to room temperature before you beat it. Cold cream cheese gives you lumps that no amount of whisking will smooth out, and since the glaze goes on in dollops between the layers rather than being spread thin, every lump shows.

Cooking Them: A Hot Pan, Golden Brown Edges, and Keeping the Batch Warm

Heat the pan on medium and let it come up properly before the first quarter cup of batter goes in. A hot pan sets the outside quickly, which is what gives you a lifted, fluffy pancake instead of a flat one that has spread while it waited. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until bubbles come up through the surface, then flip and give it another 1 to 2 minutes; the cooked side should be golden brown, and cocoa batter hides color changes, so trust the bubbles rather than your eyes. A hot griddle behaves the same way and lets you run three or four at a time, which matters when the recipe makes six servings.

Each finished pancake goes onto a baking sheet in a 200F oven while you work through the rest of the batch. If you are cooking a large batch, tent the sheet loosely with foil so the ones underneath do not dry out at the edges. The oven is not optional here in the way it is for a normal stack, because these get assembled in layers and a cold pancake in the middle of a warm stack is obvious the moment you cut into it.

One note on the strawberry puree: if it comes out of the blender too thin, reduce it in a saucepan over medium heat, but keep it at a bare simmer rather than a hard boil. Boiled hard, it tastes jammy and cooked-down rather than fresh, which is the opposite of what it is doing between the layers. A squeeze of lemon brightens the strawberries if they are out of season, and if you would rather go the traditional route, the cherry compote option further up this page turns the whole thing into a proper Black Forest.