Nutritious 3 Ingredient Pancakes (banana, eggs, and oats)

In this post I will share an alternative recipe to classic pancakes. This alternative is more convenient, healthier, and it tastes great. Traditional pancakes are delicious too, but they are made up of primarily white flour, granulated sugar, and hard to remember amounts of baking soda, baking powder, and milk. They always leave me feeling kind of bad afterwards after spiking my blood sugar to the moon and not offering much substantive nutrition. I have to buy a pre-made mix or look up the ingredients every time I want to make my own pancakes. Making them requires a lot of measuring and doing lots of dishes.

That's why I like this simpler, healthier, and more convenient recipe. A banana, oats, and eggs, three ubiquitous and cheap ingredients, can be turned into a pancake that is, to me, even better tasting than regular pancakes. The recipe is easy to remember. The ingredients are staples that I always have on hand. The ingredients are nutrient-dense and wholesome, providing protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals that are lacking in regular pancakes.

I started playing around with making healthier pancakes after watching a video from one of my favorite Youtube channels, Pro Home Cooks. In this video the host goes over his ideal meal plan for a day of home cooking, from a citrus water first thing in the morning to a coconut curry for dinner.

In his version of banana pancakes he uses two bananas and two eggs as opposed to my one banana to two eggs ratio. His version of healthy pancakes uses coconut flour and chickpea flour, which are things I didn't even know existed, so I just opted for oats, which I always have on hand. I make oat flour by grinding up a quarter cup of whole oats in an electric spice grinder. It takes like 5 seconds to grind the oats up so it's way easier than it sounds to make oat flour. He also adds some baking powder to his recipe, but I can't tell a difference when I add it so I just leave it out. He adds salt, but I normally cook my pancake in salted butter so I just leave the salt out too. Here is my recipe:

Nutritious Three Ingredient Pancake

Ingredients

• one banana
• two eggs
• 1/4 cup of oat flour

Recipe

1. mash up a ripe banana with a fork in a mixing bowl until it is liquified
2. crack two whole eggs into the mixing bowl with the banana and beat until mixed together
3. add oat flour to the bowl and mix. I make my oat flour by adding a quarter cup of whole oats to an electric coffee/spice grinder and grinding them until they are a fine powder.
4. Preheat a medium sized skillet on medium until hot
5. Add some butter, coconut oil, or your preferred cooking oil to the pan until melted
6. Add your pancake batter to the pan
7. Cook for 5 minutes on the first side
8. Flip the pancake with a large spatula. This part can be tricky so be careful
9. cook the other side for another 4-5 minutes. You can check under the pancake with the spatula
10. Add your preferred toppings (butter, maple syrup, etc.) and enjoy

TL; DR

1/4 cup oats + 🍌 +🥚x2 = 🥞

This recipe is versatile and hard to mess up. You can play around with the ratios of banana, eggs, and oat flour. You can add salt, baking powder, extra sweetener, etc.. You can use different kinds of flour. You can play around with the cooking times and heat. You can make several small pancakes or one big pancake. You can put this batter in a waffle maker to make waffles. You can add blueberries, chocolate chips, pecans, peanut butter, cinnamon, etc. as with any other pancake batter. You can top them with whatever you like, maple syrup, honey, jam, butter, etc.

This recipe uses convenient and nutritious ingredients, doesn't take much time to prepare, and tastes good. The recipe is so easy to remember that anytime I have some ripe bananas laying around I can whip up one of these nutrient dense pancakes easily without looking anything up. This recipe is a reminder that it can be easy to sneak some more nutrient dense ingredients into everyday meals. This pancake is loaded with protein from the eggs and fiber from the oats and banana, so it will keep you full. I really like this recipe and I am eager to try other baked goods recipes that use nutrient dense, highly satiating ingredients like these.