The Banana Pancakes that Weren’t

Sorry for the lapse in posting… it’s been a crazy week.  In addition to the usual busyness, I also started a nutrition program at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, which I am loving so far. It will definitely give tons of wonderful information.

On many (most?) food blogs, the recipes are tested and retested before they are posted. So far, I’ve posted new recipes that I made up as I went along. Some I’d made before, but many were created on the spur of the moment, and I took the photos throughout the creative process. Fortunately, all of them came out ok.

This recipe actually turned out differently than planned, but was good in its own way, so I decided to post it anyway.

I’ve been craving pancakes for a while, but wanted to make then healthier than just flour and maple syrup, so I thought to make them with oats, banana and chia seeds that were supposed to gel to hold the oats together… they didn’t :-).

I used 1/2 cup of rolled oats, dashes of cinnamon and nutmeg, 1/2 cup of vanilla soy milk, 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder, and chopped brazil nuts.

I mixed the ingredients together, then added a tablespoon of chia seeds and let the whole mixture set for a few minutes for the chia seeds to gel, then mixed in a chopped banana.

On the hot griddle….. but when it came time to flip them, they fell completely apart. I flipped what I could and mashed them together to cook the other side LOL.

Since they didn’t make it as pancakes, I decided to salvage them and eat them in a bowl like oatmeal…

topped with some plain soy yogurt. And you know what? It was GREAT! It gave a whole new meaning to oatmeal. The parts that had cooked on the outside were browned and crunchy, and the middle parts were soft and the texture was really incredible.

It took longer to make than a regular bowl of oatmeal would have, but had some really great nutrition, and knowing that this was going to be the result makes it worth it. I will definitely be making this again!