Friday Breakfast: Pancake D'Oh!

Raiding the internet fridge for some whole grain reading ...

- Yes, climate change is really and truly happening, and it may mean the end of maple syrup as we know it. (Whereupon omnivores, vegetarians, vegans and foodies (oh my!) can all join together in songs of lamentation.)

- Yes, corn ethanol really does suck, AND it's worsening antibiotic resistance.

- Yes, you do need to care about bills that will hinder organic and sustainable farming practices. Especially S. 384, which will force biotech and high capitalization farming on hungry countries in exchange for food aid.

- Yes, you can find the time for whole grains. Which is great news, because they're delicious.

All right, enough of that. I need pancakes now. Terrible breakfast indecision this morning, but it's the grain thing that tears it. I found a store near here recently that carries teff flour, teff being a gluten-free Ethiopian grain. It's nutritious and yummy. (And you, you know who you are, I'm still dreaming about a copy of that teff waffle recipe.) I started adding a bit of teff to the Bob's Red Mill gluten-free pancake mix I like - the pancakes don't rise quite as much with the teff, but they taste good and have a pleasant mouth feel.

Also, and if you have blood sugar issues like I do you'll know what I mean, but I haven't been able to just pour syrup on pancakes for years without falling asleep uncontrollably a couple hours later. I've tried many alternatives, including adding a couple tablespoons of baked or canned sweet potato to the dough to make it more moist (smashing success, these rise pretty well and are scrumptious) and less in need of syrup, but that also increased the starchy stuff:protein ratio to where syrup would still play silly buggers with me.

So I now put peanut butter on my pancakes, sometimes with a little jam. I use 2-3 eggs in the dough, so that the finished product is more of a floury omelette under the hood (the extra protein helps compensate for the gluten-free flours, though in the past I've successfully used a single small packet of unflavored gelatin for extra lift) and mostly, mostly I can still have pancakes occasionally without ill effect. Which I'm going to go do right now.

Update: As a vegetarian-friendly option, it occurs to me that I have in the past tried mixing nut butters (peanut, cashew, and once macadamia) directly into the pancake batter. It's tasty, also boosts protein content and can help with lift. But it doesn't help much with getting a moist finished product, imo, so it still leaves me the problem of needing something else to put on them.

Though this morning, in a fit of nostalgia for past sweet potato pancakes, I found a can of pumpkin left over from an optimistic past holiday season when I fantasized about making pie. I added some of that to the mix, a bunch of pumpkin pie spices and a bit of honey. Maybe my tastes have changed, but I enjoyed having the results with just a little butter on top.

(Photo credit: bunnyrel on Flickr.)