Oh wow, is all I can say…..
My boyfriend broke his ankle this week, so he’s been feeling a bit sorry for himself. To cheer him up, I made these pancakes tonight. I never imagined that ground almonds would make an awesome pancake, but this recipe is absolutely the pancake BOMB! I tell you what, I will never make pancakes with any kind of grain flour again now I’ve tasted these. Awesome comfort food, or a lovely weekend breakfast. We had them with a bit of extra chopped banana and a spoon of Nutella, which isn’t exactly primal fare, but we all need our indulgences, and it is Friday after all….
I’m pretty good with my diet most of the time, but if there’s one thing I’m a sucker for, it’s things that remind me of holidays from childhood, particularly the adventures I used to go on with my Dad, which often involved some kind of borderline forbidden indulgence or another. When I was little, you couldn’t get Nutella in the UK, it was a European thing, so it was always a holiday treat, spread on fresh rye bread at breakfast. I don’t in general like milk chocolate, but still retain a penchant for Lindt original milk chocolate, which we used to break squares off half way up the mountain side on our expeditions, whilst stopping to plan our route just right to beat the late summer thunderstorms home.
However, if you did want to keep these pancakes strictly primal, you could try adding a drizzle of honey and some plain yoghurt, or adding some fruit to the batter. Blueberries would work well, as would raisins, or chopped dried apple and a pinch of cinnamon, for a German apple cake-style effect. One of the things I’ll say for these is that they will fill you up as well, in a way that flour based pancakes don’t – the protein and fat content of the almonds is really satisfying, and in fact I struggled to finish my portion. I managed though, much to the disappointment of the dog, who was watching with beady eyes!
Ingredients (makes 2 generous pancakes or 4 small American style)
1 small mashed banana
2 free range eggs
1/2 cup of ground almonds
pinch of sea salt flakes
And yeah….that’s all you need, plus coconut oil for frying them, or butter if you prefer the flavour I guess. The batter isn’t runny like normal European style pancakes or crepes, I think the closest thing I could compare them to, taste wise, would be Dutch Poffertjes, which is kind of a puffed mini pancake. They don’t puff up like Poffertjes do, but somehow the taste was slightly reminiscent of them. I remember having them once, many years B.C. (Before Coeliac) on a trip with my Dad in Maastricht, covered in cinnamon sugar, and I thought I’d died and gone to sugar heaven – light, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth soft batter, followed by a huge hit of toothsome sweetness. My attempts at gluten free pancakes thus far have been lacklustre to say the least. Buckwheat flour yields a rather earthy taste and texture, which lends itself well to savoury pancakes, but not so much to sweet ones. The gluten free plain flour just tended to soak the oil in the pan like a sponge. But these almond ones are the closest thing I’ve found that match the lightness of those Dutch pancakes, and allowed me to revisit my wide eyed ten year old self for a few moments. And I think we all need some of that occasionally.
Panda's Kitchen 