Saturday, July 11, 2009

Coconut Flour Pancakes, Man

If you are looking for a truly guilt free way to eat pancakes that have the bonus quality of not putting you into a deep postprandial coma, you've come to the right place. Everyone loves them, see:


Coconut flour is gluten free, and high in fiber. It's also right tasty in certain applications, the following being one of my favorite. Here's what you need:
Three Tbs coconut oil or melted butter
Three Tbs coconut milk or heavy cream
Three Tbs coconut flour
Three eggs (notice a pattern here?)
Honey- probably about a Tbs, but I just squirt a big glop in the batter and it always comes out fine. Measuring honey takes too long.
1/4 Tsp baking powder (I've left it out and it still came out fine)
1/4 Tsp vanilla extract
1/4 Tsp almond extract (both extracts can be excluded is you don't have them, but it would be a lot cooler if you did)
A pinch of salt-- I prefer kosher salt or sea salt, but whatever.

That's it. I also tend to add pecans or blueberries or bananas or some combination (pecans and blueberries for today), but these things are great straight up.

Start with the eggs. I've discovered that whisking them until they're a pale yellow somehow makes them better in the recipe, although I'm not sure why. Next, whisk in the coconut oil. You really have to whisk it so it emulsifies with the eggs or you'll get solid chunks of coconut oil floating in the batter. Coconut oil solidifies at 75 degrees or so, and most people refrigerate their eggs. Whisk in the cream or coconut milk. Whisk in the flour, honey, and then everything else except blueberries if you're using them. I always add the blueberries a few at a time to the pancakes as I make them to avoid the batter turning blue, like that chick in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Heat up your pancake pan of choice. I have two. One is a giant cast iron griddle that takes a crane to get it out of the drawer, and the other is a non stick job that I usually end up using because it weighs less and I don't want to hurt my back making breakfast. That would be stupid.

A word on coconut oil-- there are multiple types and brands out there, so I've done some homework for you. As far as brands go, I don't think you can do better than Wilderness Family Naturals, which is a company that is owned and operated by a large homeschooling family in Minnesota. There are multiple types of coconut oil, and for the pancakes we use the extra virgin, cold pressed, centrifuge extracted oil, which has a coconutty flavor. There is also cold pressed extra virgin, but without the centrifuging, and it taste much more neutral for things that you don't want to taste like coconut. These oils are high in lauric acid, which is a saturated fat that has anti-microbial and anti-viral properties, and can be easily digested and turned into energy by your body. Lauric acid is one of the components of mother's milk, too. Feel free to check me on all of this...We also use WFN's coconut flour, too:After you get everything mixed, start making pancakes. I'm sure you know how, but here's some pics, just in case:The taste is definitely coconut tinged, and the texture isn't going to be what you're used to, but there is no doubt that they're delicious. Add that to the fact that they're good for you, and what you've got is health food for breakfast, which is a notoriously difficult meal for healthy choices. And the boys love them, just like they said.

2 comments:

Scentsibly Prepared said...

GREG - I googled "coconut flour pancakes" and look where it sent me :) Will made some Sunday and just "subbed" coconut flour for our usual recipe (it called for 2 cups flour - so he used the last of our coconut flour - 2 1/4 cups!!) - they ended up being scrambled pancakes because he could not add enough water to make them thin :) Sweet man making breakfast for me - we all really liked them! He said he figured that with the eggs, coconut flour, vanilla, and coconut cream concentrate - we had $20 worth of ingredients and he was not throwing them away!

Scentsibly Prepared said...

Made a double batch of these this morning. Then another double batch.

"Whisking" means use a blender, right? As we've gone native and are living in south Texas without air conditioning and are eating our eggs, "Straight out of a chicken's . . ." the caution about the cold eggs/oil was unecessary. However, for the same reason we store all of our flour in the freezer.

I used a blend of expeller pressed coconut oil and coconut cream for the oil. Can't stand the taste of regular coconut oil. I used water for the milk/cream since we make most of our coconut milk by "whisking" together water and coconut cream. I 'spilled' the vanilla tripling, or more, the amount. This happens every time I try to measure vanilla. No almond extract but I'm thinking Amaretto next time.

I prefer my pancakes a bit on the thinner side - avoids the mush in the middle if they aren't cooked quite enough - so I added a bit of extra water. Besides, a skinny pancake has almost the same surface area that must be covered with butter and maple syrup and you need more of them to make a 'full' stack.

Good Stuff! Much better than last time I tried by substituting Coconut flour for regular flour in our favorite pancake recipe - ended up with two big bowls of scrambled pancakes. The previous experiment with Chick Pea flour worked out very well this way, though.

Mommy got involved with batch two and I saw bananas and a handful of Pecan Halves being "whisked" in. These probably needed more eggs to keep up with the extra ingredients as they tended to fall apart - very tasty though. The pecans added a very nice flavor.

Thanks for sharing breakfast with us!

Will and Bev.