Ten Pancake Topping Ideas from Around the World

What’s your favorite breakfast? Among the most inviting ones are pancakes. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s almost a guarantee that they would like to taste one, thanks to the continuous promotion of American culture on TV and in movies. 

Fortunately, a pancake is easy to make, requires only minutes to prepare, and even your clumsy husband can be trained to cook it as well. Using easy-to-find ingredients, common cooking tools, and the versatility to be combined with various pancake toppings, it’s among the less laborious ways to bring joy to the table.

Here are some ideas for pancake toppings:

Maple Syrup Pancake

Perhaps the most common ones shown on TV; an all-time favorite usually synonymous with a happy, American family, or luxurious resort breakfast somewhere in Bali. The combination of a fluffy warm pancake with the sweet fragrant maple syrup—or its faux ones—more often than not invokes a warm feeling inside us.

Palm Sugar Pancake

Want a more Asian twist? Substitute the maple syrup with palm sugar syrup. It works well with all the hyped palm sugar coffee, it certainly works wonders with pancakes, too. Look for locally sourced ones or create one yourself. Unlike maple, palm sugar syrup tends to have a stronger caramel taste and subtle coconut aroma. Some would even have an intense chocolate flavor.

Strawberries and Cream Pancake

Another common topping comes with either chopped or whole red strawberries on top of a mass of sweet whipped cream. Different from its Maple sibling though, this one tends to show up more as desserts or in movies where the protagonist visits a diner. It sometimes comes rolled instead of lying flat.

Chocolate Pancake 

What’s not to like about a chocolate pancake? All you need to do is add cocoa powder, and voila! You’re adding an extra dose of joy to the already fun dessert. What about the toppings? All toppings, from the classic vanilla to chocolate ice cream, would do just fine.

Triple Chocolate Pancake

When a  mood booster is what you’re craving, don’t stop at regular chocolate pancakes, but go all the way by adding chocolate syrup and chocolate chips toppings! Your children would love it, and your sweet-toothed friends would surely, too.

Asian Chocolate Pancake

Why Asian? Because it’s not rocket science that chocolate and palm sugar work well combined! They add that coconutty twist to the already amazing chocolate flavor. Melt some chocolate compound with palm sugar and it would make a delicious alternative to your usual maple syrup.

Caramelized Banana

From the family of fruit-flavored pancakes comes this version of pancake with banana slices cooked in butter until it forms a golden crusts, which adds that savory sweet sensation to your pancake. Don’t stop there; add some chocolate spread in between the stacks and you just made yourself a heavenly treat.

Smoked Ham or Smoked beef & Cheese

Why? Well, why not? Instead of your usual sweet pancakes, savory ones have their own charms. Substituting your maple syrup with melting cheese and a chunk of ham is usually a good introduction to the way of savory pancakes. Don’t eat pork? Then use smoked beef to substitute.

Japanese Pancake

Add some cabbage and chopped pork belly to the batter, shaved bonito and seaweed flakes for topping, then drench it with oyster sauce and mayonnaise. Yup, you guessed it right! You just created an okonomiyaki. As alternatives, chopped octopus legs and shrimps also add to the magic.

Smoked Salmon Pancake

Put  slices of smoked salmon to your freshly made pancake, spread some crème fraîche, and sprinkle it with some dill, chives, capers, and freshly ground pepper. You just turned an otherwise common breakfast item into a fancy entrée.

Have you tried any of these pancake toppings or maybe you have your personal favorite? You can also top your pancake with other chocolate ingredients from Tulip Chocolate to get that tasty creamy chocolate flavor.