Pancake Syrup - Easy

This morning I was feeling a bit generous, so I offered theHubby a choice of pancakes or waffles for breakfast instead of the usual nothing (not that I'm mean, but he usually waits until mid-morning for something to eat, long after I leave for work).  After he chose pancakes (Yay ... less work!) I went to the pantry and discovered that the pancake syrup I thought was hiding behind the oatmeal box was so good at hiding that I couldn't find it.  Not too worried, I assumed that the non-high-fructose corn syrup in the pantry, along with some other magical ingredient or two could sub for the real" high-fructose corn syrup-based imitation maple pancake syrup.

So after firing up the intertubes, I learned 3 new knowledgey thingies this morning:
1) absolutely none of the clone recipes (of the 5 I looked at) used corn syrup,
2) most add maple extract to approximate that comforting imitation flavor, and
2) it is so mad easy to make syrup that you can make enough to bathe in (I've heard sugar massages are wonderful but probably a pain to clean up afterwards ... but I digress).

Although all of the recipes use pretty much the same 4 ingredients with quantity adjustments, I decided upon the one from DelishMegish, mostly because she uses vanilla extract instead of the pretend maple.  Amanda (go to her About page to understand her blog's name) took a recipe from food.com and tweaked it a bit.  I took Amanda's recipe and tweaked it a little more, only because it was early in the morning (still recovering from a wild night of Chinese food and a Hobbit afterwards) and I accidentally added too much granulated sugar, then decided I liked the result anyway.

TheHubby said it needed more maple syrup in the syrup, otherwise it was a keeper.  I said, "No problem ... next time, hon."  Then sneaked "mini bottle of pure maple syrup" onto the shopping list.


Pancake Syrup - Easy
Adapted from: DelishMegish
Yield: approx. 1 cup (enough for 4 servings)

1 cup water
1 cup white granulated sugar
1/3 packed cup brown sugar
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract (or 1 Tbl. pure maple syrup)

 Heat water and both sugars in a 1-quart saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved, then stir occasionally until mixture comes to a complete boil.

I used the syrup immediately.

Remove from heat.  Let cool 5 minutes, then stir in vanilla or maple syrup.  Mixture will be thin at first (and can be used immediately if desired), but is supposed to thicken a little bit when completely cooled.

Cover and refrigerate any leftovers.

UPDATE!  The chilled syrup remained thin.  Delicious, but thin.