The pancake mood has struck again, and for some odd reason I’m still sticking with the idea of finding recipes for really good vegan pancakes – which for the most part just means pancakes that use baking powder or soda in place of egg for lift. I have no particular reason to avoid eggs, it’s just the gear my brain has been in when pancakes have risen up. The last round had five very different styles of pancakes, three of which were delicious and two of which simply weren’t. Let’s see where this round takes us.
First up, suggested by one of my readers after the last round, these Golden Spice Pancakes from the blog FatFree Vegan Kitchen. Really good. Really, really good. If I made them again I think I’d ramp up the spice a trifle more per her suggestion, though not too much more – I, too, liked that the orange flavor shown through, but felt it could have handled more spice. The texture was great, actually, one of the best, based on recollection of the others – even without any sort of fat in them. My guess is, though, that her admonition to serve immediately is probably a good one – fat free things of this nature have a tendency to sort of seize up when left sitting any length of time and get very dry.
Leaving aside the fat free, I did a search on whole grain vegan pancakes, figuring it might be interesting to see what was out there. One of the first to pop up was this rye and whole wheat flour based version from the site allrecipes. I’m a sucker for good rye bread and wouldn’t have thought about it for breakfast pancakes, but, why not? Great flavor, love the nuttiness from both the rye and the whole wheat, just emphasized by actual nuts, the pecans. They have a darker color because of the flours, and a texture that’s a little denser, but not to the point of being gummy – I did have to make one minor change as I didn’t have any soy flour in house, so for the single tablespoon of that I used rice flour – I doubt that had any major impact on either flavor or texture. I happened to have some stewed blueberries around from dinner a day or two before, and those worked perfectly with the deep flavors of the pancakes.
These are just an unmitigated disaster. There’s no way that this recipe for Gluten Free Banana Bread pancakes, as written, works. Following the directions, by the time the bottom is browned and crisp, the top and center are still a liquid, bubbling mess – I tried low heat, high heat, small ones, big ones, and nothing made a difference. Other than the surface, the rest of the batter stays not “moist” as stated, but basically as raw batter – there’s not enough binding coming from the oats to hold this together – they just spread and spread throughout the pan. In order to get the interior to firm up required burning the outside, and even then it was still fairly wet in the center. In the cooking process the walnut flour becomes bitter, and the flavor combination is odd with the addition of olive oil. About the only thing I could think of would be to bake them in small molds like banana bread, which is sort of what it is.
On that note, I just couldn’t face any more pancakes, so for the moment, we’ll end this exploration here with just a trio. Plus, today is World Vegan Day, so it’s an appropriate one to release this into the wild.
