Thanksgiving morning we traditionally serve up a bagel bar—all sorts of bagels and oodles of different toppings. It holds us over until the big dinner appears. We going to do something similar for New Year’s Day. We’re serving a pancake bar. I got the idea from our friends at Prepared Pantry (preparedpantry.com).

In an email they sent awhile back they talked about their love affair with pancakes and how they never have to get boring. Then they shared ten ways to make everyday pancakes extraordinary:

Put fruit in them. Of course, you can add blueberries—just don’t stir them too much or the batter turns blue. Or mixed a couple mashed bananas into the batter. Or add grated apples. Chopped peaches or whole raspberries work well. Just adjust the liquid in the instructions as needed.

Put fruit on them. Sliced peaches, strawberries or other berries are prefect. Any soft fruit works.

Top them with whipped cream. Whipped cream and fruit on pancakes is delightful but just whipped cream and syrup is great too. The trick here is to make it flavored whipped cream. The folks at Prepared Pantry recommend Caramel Whipped Cream. I would agree, and I made mine by adding 1 or 2 tablespoons of caramel ice cream topping rather than the sugar when I whipped my cream.

Add nuts. Chopped pecans added to pancakes creates a delicious extra flavor layer. Just pour the batter on the griddle and then sprinkle nuts over the batter. When turning the pancakes, the nuts get toasted.

Make stuffed pancakes. Add sliced bananas, or pie or pastry filling into folded pancakes. Think empanadas on the griddle.

Make maple bacon pancakes. Top your pancakes with crisp bacon and shredded cheddar. Pour hot maple syrup over the stack so that the cheddar melts. Maple syrup and bacon is a terrific combination.

Add peach melba to your pancakes. Peach melba is a combination of peaches and raspberries with a splash of vanilla. Top it with a dollop of whipped cream.

Add cinnamon chips to your pancakes. Cinnamon chips make most pancakes better. If you want extra cinnamon flavor, add a teaspoon of ground cinnamon as well.

Add baking chips to your pancakes. The pancake houses sell pancakes with chocolate chips added. You can do the same. Mini chips, so that you get chocolate in every bite, work better than full-sized chips. The Prepared Pantry sells a wide variety of baking chips: raspberry, blueberry, or strawberry, for instance. Raspberry is popular favorite (they give a splash of color and flavor when melted into the batter; the results are terrific).

I like shopping on the Prepared Pantry website (www.preparedpantry.com). They have such a wide variety of everything, and they don’t offer anything until they’ve tested it in their Rigby, ID, store’s kitchen first. For instance, they have 23 kinds of pancake mixes and 26 kinds of pancake syrups.

Our New Year’s Day pancake bar is going to be a lot of fun; I can hardly wait to see all the combinations folks come up with! I’ve read that in some cultures the pancake is a symbol of the good things in life. Can’t think of a better meal to serve at the start of a new year!