Thursday

Paleo Pancakes - Using Three Ingredients





There has been a lot of buzz lately surrounding the Paleo (short for Paleolithic) diet. Essentially it it is a caveman diet consisting of meat and other hunter/gatherer type foods:

"presumed ancient diet of wild plants and animals that various hominid species habitually consumed during the Paleolithic era—a period of about 2.5 million years duration that ended around 10,000 years ago with the development of agriculture."1

On the Paleo diet you only eat grass-fed pasture raised meats, fish, fruit and veg (including root vegetables like potatoes) and nuts. You are not allowed to eat any grains, legumes, dairy products, refined salt, refined sugar or processed oils.

I am mainly a veggie eater so could never follow a strict Paleo diet but I do like the idea of trying to reduce the amount of grains, dairy products and refined/processed foods/oil that I consumes so I have been looking at Paleo recipes for the last couple of weeks. My Thai Chicken Burgers could easily be made Paleo by replacing the breadcrumbs with almond meal.

One of the recipes I came across is Paleo Pancakes using only three ingredients - egg, banana and almond butter. I love eggs, banana and of course my precious nut butter (on how to make it - see my Nut Butter post), so this seemed like a winning combo.

After reading lots of comments where people had problems making their pancakes (they would crumble and fall apart), I gave it a go being very careful to cook it on a low temperature and turn carefully after around 3-4 minutes. The results were wonderful!

I have a warning for people who don't like cooked banana i.e. banana bread - you won't like these pancakes. My friend who came over to help me make them didn't like the banana so I made an big batch using more eggs, coconut flour and almond meal to mask the flavour of the banana and they eventually also turned out well after a bit of experimenting.

My partner and I ended up eating the leftovers during the week as a high protein snack topped with blended strawberries and stevia and more nut butter - it was like eating peanut butter and jelly pikelets!

What you need to make 2 pancakes:
  • one ripe banana
  • one organic egg
  • one tbsp almond butter
  • coconut oil for cooking
Optional extras include: cinnamon, baking powder to make them fluffy, stevia, almond meal, coconut milk, nuts, vanilla extract, chia seeds, flax seeds and/or coconut flour (note: if you are adding coconut milk, almond meal or coconut flour you will have to experiment a bit)

For the topping:
  • strawberries
  • a few drops of liquid stevia
  • 1tsp lemon juice
  • blueberries (optional)
  • maple syrup (optional)
  • coconut cream (optional)
How to cook them them:

Add all of your ingredients for the pancakes to a blender and blend until smooth. Let the pancake batter sit until it is no longer bubbling. Add a small amount of coconut oil to a non-stick frying pan over low heat. Give the batter a quick stir then add a small amount of batter to the pan. You need to make these pancakes small or you can't flip them - they are more like a pikelet size. Wait 3-4 minutes and then carefully flip them over and quickly cook the other side. I find I can do three in the pan at once if I am making a big batch.

While your pancakes are cooking blend some strawberries and stevia until you have a sauce.

Serve the pancakes with the strawberry sauce and coconut cream (optional), or some maple syrup. YUM!




If anyone is interested in the not-so-bananery version of these pancakes please let me know and I will do a follow up post x