Indulge in These Heavenly Strawberry Shortcake Pancakes

This post may contain affiliate links. Read our disclosure policy

Strawberry Shortcake Pancake Recipe

Pancake Sunday has rolled around! Time for another recipe! I have a huge selection of pancake recipes depending on your mood! I’ve got some healthy pancake recipes, such as these Berry Explosion Pancakes, chocolate pancakes such as Layered Black Forest Pancakes, and crazy ones for special occasions (or just any ordinary morning if you choose!) such as these Extremely Fun & Fluffy M&M Funfetti Pancakes! I love that last one, it’s such a mouthful, but its massive title sure does speak for itself in how delicious this stack is!

Who loves fruits and is crazy for strawberries? This delicious, light and fruity rendition of Strawberry Shortcake brings the fun and flavor in a compact package for your breakfast.

This strawberry shortcake pancakes recipe consists of simple pancakes made from a batter with oat flour, and they’re layered with caramelized strawberries and whipped cream. This sounds simple but trust me, there’s so many intense flavors thanks to the caramelized strawberries, and that’s the part that truly shines in this pancake recipe!

Caramelizing the Strawberries

This recipe for strawberry shortcake pancakes is the perfect recipe for beginners. Caramelizing strawberries may sound intimidating, but trust me, you will not believe how easy and delicious they are! All you need to do is roast them in the oven! Caramelizing strawberries is something I love to do to truly enjoy the juiciness of strawberries. They become almost like jam! Caramelizing the strawberries is also ideal for someone who loves the natural sweetness of fruit. Of course if you have a giant sweet tooth, you can sprinkle the sugar on top of the strawberries before adding them to the oven.

Layering the Strawberry Shortcake Pancakes

After you’ve finished cooking your pancakes, you’re going to layer them with some of the caramelized strawberries and whipped cream. If you want to go bananas (even though we’re eating strawberries!), you could add some extra sliced strawberries on the top pancake. To bring this Strawberry Shortcake stack together, finish off with a generous dousing of maple syrup.

These pancakes will change your life and make your Sunday brunch that much more special by reminiscing on this classic Strawberry Shortcake!

Frequently Asked Questions

Tools Needed

• Baking sheet
• Parchment paper
• Large bowl
• Mixing bowl
• Whisk
• Nonstick pan
• Spatula
• Colander
• Measuring spoons

A Pancake Batter with No Soda, No Butter and No Salt

The batter is short: 1 cup of all purpose flour, 2 tsp of baking powder, 1 1/4 cup of milk, 1 large egg, 1 tbsp of honey and 1 tsp of vanilla extract. Three things are missing from that list and each one is worth noticing. There is no baking soda, so 2 teaspoons of baking powder are doing all of the lifting on their own, which is a generous amount for a single cup of flour and is exactly why these rise as quickly as they do in the pan.

There is also no butter in the batter itself. The 2 tsp of butter in the ingredients is for cooking only, which keeps the pancakes light rather than rich and leaves room for the whipped cream that is coming. And there is no salt at all, not even a pinch of kosher salt. That is a deliberate-looking choice given how low the sodium ends up, but if you find the vanilla and honey tasting flat, a small pinch whisked into the dry ingredients is the fix.

Honey is the only sweetener in the batter, at a single tablespoon, so the pancakes themselves are barely sweet and the sugar arrives with the strawberries and syrup instead. Oat flour is the listed swap for the all purpose flour, and water or buttermilk can replace the milk. Buttermilk is a nice option here precisely because there is no soda to rebalance: with baking powder alone you get the tang without having to adjust anything else.

Mixing and Cooking: The Bubbles Are the Timer

Keep the wet and dry apart to begin with. Flour and baking powder go into a large bowl; the milk, egg, honey and vanilla get combined in a separate medium bowl, and only then do the wet ingredients go into the dry. Bring it together with a whisk, or an electric mixer if you prefer, until you have what the recipe describes as a thick but runny pancake batter. Do not fold and fold at it. A few lumps in the mixture are fine and will disappear in the pan, whereas overworked batter turns tough.

Cook them on medium heat with a little butter, about 1/4 cup of batter per pancake. Watch the surface rather than the clock: after a minute or two, bubbles rise and start to hold their shape, and that is your signal to flip. The second side is quicker, so the whole pancake is usually done inside 2-3 minutes and comes off golden brown. A griddle lets you run three at once; in a skillet keep them towards the middle rather than the sides of the pan, where the heat drops off.

As each one finishes, move it onto a baking sheet in the oven, which is already on for the strawberries. That keeps the stack warm while you work through the batter, and 1 cup of flour makes 6 pancakes.

Roasting the Strawberries, and Why They Get Drained

This is where the recipe departs from every strawberry pancake you have made before. Two cups of strawberries go onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet in a single layer and into a 450 F oven for 15 minutes, stirred every so often, until they are completely caramelized. A tablespoon of sugar tossed through beforehand is optional and only for a sweeter result. Fresh strawberries and frozen both work, though frozen need thawing first.

Note what is not happening. There is no saucepan and nothing is boiled. A conventional compote is simmered down on the stove, often with cornstarch to thicken it and lemon juice to brighten it, and there is none of that here. Roasting concentrates the berries by driving water off in dry heat instead, which gives you a deeper, jammier flavor than simmering ever does.

Then the step people skip, and it matters more than any other: tip the roasted berries into a colander set over a bowl and leave them to cool and drain for 10 to 15 minutes. Roasted strawberries give up a lot of liquid, and if that liquid goes into the stack it runs straight through and turns the pancakes to pulp. Keep what collects in the bowl underneath. It is a strawberry sauce with nothing added to it, and it belongs over the top of the finished stack.

Assembling, the Numbers, and Leftovers

Build it in order: pancake, caramelized strawberries, a dollop of whipped cream, and repeat, finishing the top layer with cream and the last of the berries. Six tbsp of whipped cream across the whole stack is about right, so this is a dollop per layer rather than a mountain. Maple syrup at the table to taste, with honey or agave nectar as listed alternatives. If you would rather whip your own, take heavy cream to soft peaks with an electric mixer rather than stiff peaks, which sit stiffly on a warm pancake and can turn grainy.

Each pancake works out at 162 calories with 7 g of protein, 21 g of carbohydrates, 6 g of fat, 1 g of fiber and 5 g of sugar. The sodium is only 68 mg, which is unusually low for a pancake and follows directly from there being no salt in the batter. The protein and the calcium are both coming from the milk and the egg. The recipe card does not break out cholesterol, and the egg is the only place it would come from.