Say Goodbye To Boring Pancakes With This Simple Swap

This isn't gonna be another one of those mornings where you phone-in meh griddlecakes and cover up the chewy cardboardiness with a low-key gallon of syrup. Say buh-bye to boring pancakes for good, and crank breakfast up to an eleven by swapping in a drink you might already have in your fridge: chocolate milk. [Insert Kip Dynamite's "Yesss."]

Before you go pouring chocolate milk straight onto your short stack, there's a little bit of pajamas-level strategy involved. Chocolate milk serves up a 1:1 substitute for the milk called for in any recipe for fluffy pancakes — or even your favorite boxed mix. You can boost the flavor even more by adding a little cocoa powder to the mix, or go full death by chocolate by topping everything off with chocolate pancake syrup, chocolate whipped topping, and a generous sprinkle of chocolate chips. For complementary, non-chocolate add-ons, you can go for fresh berries, peanut butter, bananas and nuts, or big hot cocoa marshmallow energy.

A quick word of advice: Keep the chocolate milk in a glass on the side if you're working with buttermilk pancakes. Unlike standard cow's milk, buttermilk pulls double-duty by adding flavor and fluffiness to your pancakes, so eliminating it — even in the name of sweet, delicious chocolate — will impact the structure ... and nobody wants a pile of flat-jacks with their morning coffee.

Swapping flavored milk into your favorite pancake recipe opens up an eye-popping world of technicolor flavor. But you don't have to stop at chocolate milk (or even put on going-outside clothes) to taste the rainbow of dairy flavors.

Make like the Chick-fil-A Banana Pudding Milkshake and top banana milk pancakes with banana pudding, vanilla wafers, and — of course — bananas. Channel your inner Strawberry Shortcake with strawberry milk pancakes and fresh sliced strawberries (Go for gold with strawberry crunch topping that feels like it came straight off a Good Humor ice cream bar). Coffee-flavored milk keeps breakfast pancakes solidly in a.m. territory, and malted milk lends a '50s greasy spoon-style spin. You can even add earthy, nutty, vanilla flavors to your pancakes with taro milk, topped with fresh pineapples, shredded coconut, and coconut syrup.

This might already seem like — a lot — for breakfast, but if we're crawling out from under those cozy covers, it should be worth it, right? Since we've come this far, Nestle collaborated on a Nesquik dessert milk that basically puts Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies into a bottle of milk. I'm not saying this is the best milk to add to your pancakes, but if someone served me a stack of chocolate chip cookie milk pancakes with chocolate chip cookie crumbles and maybe a little drizzle of chocolate syrup, I wouldn't be mad about it, and we would be best friends times infinity. Once you swap in flavored milk for your pancakes, chances are, you'll never look back.