Best Spices for Pancakes

Pancake batter is mild, so it carries spice well. The simplest options are cinnamon and vanilla; the more interesting ones are the warm blends people already know from baking and tea: pumpkin pie spice, gingerbread spices, apple pie spice and chai. Two extension-service pumpkin pancake recipes use about 1¼ to 1½ teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice for a two-cup-of-flour batch, and a Williams-Sonoma gingerbread pancake measures its cinnamon, ginger and cloves separately. This page covers what goes into each option and how much named recipes use. Quantities appear only where a named recipe gives them.

At a glance

Spice or blend	What it brings	Where it appears
Cinnamon	Sweet, warm, woody; the default	Gingerbread pancakes, 1 tsp¹
Vanilla	Rounded sweetness	Williams-Sonoma’s syrup, ½ tsp¹
Pumpkin pie spice	Cinnamon-led warm blend	Both extension pumpkin pancakes²³
Gingerbread spices: ginger, cinnamon, cloves	Sharper, darker warmth with molasses	Williams-Sonoma gingerbread pancakes¹
Apple pie spice	Cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice	Label ingredients vary by maker⁴⁵
Chai spices	Cardamom-led, more aromatic	Borrowed from masala chai⁶⁷⁸

Pumpkin pie spice

Pumpkin pancakes are the best-documented spiced pancake. Two SNAP-Ed recipes from university extension services both use pumpkin pie spice and canned pumpkin:

Recipe	Flour	Pumpkin	Pumpkin pie spice	Other
Perfect Pumpkin Pancakes, Ohio State University Extension (from MyPlate Kitchen)²	2 cups	½ cup canned	1¼ tsp	6 tsp brown sugar, 1 egg, 1¾ cups low-fat milk
Pumpkin Pancakes, Montana State University Extension³	2 cups (1 all-purpose, 1 whole wheat)	1 cup	1½ tsp	2 tbsp brown sugar, 1 egg, 2 cups nonfat milk

Neither recipe adds vanilla.²³

What is in the blend depends on who made it. McCormick’s pumpkin pie spice, which the company has sold since 1934, lists cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice and sulfiting agents; it contains no cloves.⁹ Oregon State’s Food Hero recipe for the blend uses 2 tablespoons cinnamon and 1 tablespoon ginger to 1½ teaspoons each of nutmeg and cloves.¹⁰ US labels list ingredients in descending order of predominance by weight,¹¹ so McCormick’s blend is cinnamon first. Either way the blend is cinnamon-led, not clove-led. See pumpkin pie spice substitutes.

Gingerbread spices

There is no standard gingerbread spice blend. Williams-Sonoma’s gingerbread pancakes, adapted from its Essentials of Breakfast and Brunch, use 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, ¾ teaspoon ground ginger and ⅛ teaspoon ground cloves with 2 tablespoons of light molasses, for 1¼ cups of flour.¹ Older gingerbreads vary just as much: Amelia Simmons’s 1796 American Cookery uses ginger by the ounce in some recipes, and cinnamon with “some coriander or allspice” in her molasses gingerbread.¹² Allspice, a single berry whose flavor Britannica compares to a mix of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves,¹³ is a simple way to add depth. Black pepper is sometimes suggested for gingerbread blends; none of the recipes here uses it. See cooking with ginger, cooking with cloves and too much ginger.

Apple pie spice

Apple pie spice is cinnamon-forward, but makers disagree on the rest. McCormick’s label lists cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, and McCormick suggests it for French toast and oatmeal as well as pie.⁴ The Spice House’s lists cinnamon, star anise, nutmeg, allspice, ginger and cloves.⁵ Chopped apple folded into the batter makes the pairing obvious (our suggestion). See apple pie spice substitutes.

Chai spices

Chai spice is borrowed from masala chai, spiced milk tea. Three named recipes compared on our chai spices page (Saveur, Dishoom and the Culinary Institute of America) all use green cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and cloves, and two add black pepper.⁶⁷⁸ The CIA notes that chai masala mixtures may include cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and peppercorns.⁸ In our judgment, cardamom is what makes the blend smell like chai rather than pie. Its essential oil is mainly 1,8-cineole (20 to 60%) and α-terpinyl acetate, according to PROSEA,¹⁴ and none of the pie blends above includes it. Ground cardamom, a little cinnamon and ginger stirred into the dry ingredients give a chai pancake without tea (our suggestion). See cardamom and too much cardamom.

Cinnamon and vanilla on their own

Cinnamon. The cinnamon most often sold in North America is cassia, according to NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.¹⁵ Cassia contains coumarin; Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment calculates that a 60 kg adult reaches the tolerable daily intake at about 2 g of cassia with average coumarin content a day.¹⁶ Occasional pancakes are not the pattern the BfR warns about; regular heavy use of cassia is (our reading). Cinnamon whisked into the dry ingredients spreads more evenly than cinnamon added to the wet (our judgment). See Ceylon vs. cassia cinnamon and cinnamon substitutes.

Vanilla. Williams-Sonoma puts its vanilla in the syrup rather than the batter, ½ teaspoon with maple syrup and orange flower water.¹ Vanilla’s flavor develops in curing: fresh beans contain odorless vanillin glucoside, and cured pods hold about 2% vanillin, according to Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages.¹⁷ In the US, vanilla extract must contain at least 35% ethyl alcohol by volume; with less, it is sold as vanilla flavoring.¹⁸ See vanilla extract substitutes and too much vanilla.

Gingerbread Pancakes, Williams-Sonoma, adapted from Essentials of Breakfast and Brunch, 2007. williams-sonoma.ca · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Perfect Pumpkin Pancakes, Ohio SNAP-Ed, Ohio State University Extension. wayne.osu.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³
Pumpkin Pancakes, Montana State University Extension. iframe.msuextension.org · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³
McCormick Apple Pie Spice, product page. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩ ↩²
Apple Pie Spice, The Spice House, product page. thespicehouse.com · Merchant ↩ ↩²
Masala Chai, Saveur, 2014. saveur.com · Publication ↩ ↩²
Masala chai, from Dishoom: From Bombay with Love, via loveFOOD. lovefood.com · Publication ↩ ↩²
Masala Chai, CIA Foodies, The Culinary Institute of America, 2021. ciafoodies.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³
McCormick Pumpkin Pie Spice, product page. mccormick.com · Merchant ↩
Pumpkin Pie Spice, Food Hero, Oregon State University Extension Service. extension.oregonstate.edu · Reference work ↩
21 CFR 101.4, eCFR. ecfr.gov · Regulator ↩
Amelia Simmons, American Cookery, 1796, Project Gutenberg. gutenberg.org · Reference work ↩
Allspice, Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com · Reference work ↩
Wardini and Thomas, “Elettaria cardamomum”, PROSEA. uses.plantnet-project.org · Reference work ↩
Cinnamon: Usefulness and Safety, NCCIH, 2024. nccih.nih.gov · Regulator ↩
Cassia cinnamon with high coumarin contents to be consumed in moderation, BfR. bfr.bund.de · Regulator ↩
Vanilla (Vanilla planifolia), Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages. gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com · Reference work ↩
21 CFR Part 169 Subpart B, eCFR. ecfr.gov · Regulator ↩

The Best Spices for Pancakes: Cinnamon, Vanilla, Pumpkin Pie Spice, Gingerbread and Chai