PANCAKES WITH ALMOND FLOUR (Egg-free)

Our daughter is allergic to eggs so use an easy egg-free pancake recipe in our home. The recipe (find it here) is straightforward and results in delicious pancakes. However, it is no nutrition powerhouse, so I have been experimenting to add more nutrition into the recipe. First up was replacing a portion of all purpose flour with almond flour/meal. The results were even more delicious than the original recipe! Enjoy! 

Ingredients

2/3 cup All Purpose Flour
1/3 cup Almond Flour
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
2 teaspoons Baking Powder
1/4 teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons Sugar
1 cup Milk
1.5 Tablespoons Vegetable/Olive Oil
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/3 cup mini-chocolate chips (Optional. A must as far as my daughter is concerned. Quantity is really up to you!)

Directions

Sift flour and baking soda and powder and salt in a bowl. Some of the almond flour/meal will likely be left in the sifter, just dump what remains into the bowl. Add sugar and whisk just to blend. If you do not have a sifter, just whisk these together.

Add vanilla, oil and milk. Whisk together. An optional addition: stir as many mini-chocolate chips you you'd like.

Heat a pan on medium-low heat. Add a little butter to the pan and spread it around. This will prevent sticking and add flavor.  This recipe works best with smaller pancakes (3"-3.5" in diameter). A ~1.5 tablespoon ice-cream scoop portions the perfect amount (see note below on scoops). Scoop batter onto the pan. Cook on one side until it starts to bubble slightly on the edges. Check the bottom, if dark enough then flip and finish cooking on remaining side until desired color is reached. Slightly darker pancakes tend to taste a little better. Add a little more butter between batches. Keep a close eye on your heat if subsequent pancakes are darkening too quickly (i.e. before any bubbling begins), lower the heat. 

Serve fresh! We love them with a little maple syrup and blueberries or strawberries. My daughter eats them plain, with fruit on the side. 

Feel free to play with these. Some chopped strawberry would also be delicious stirred into the batter. 

A note on ice cream scoops

It is worth investing in a couple high quality stainless steel ice-cream scoops with a scraper in the bowl to help the filling come out with ease. They have so many uses in the kitchen! They are so handy for scooping out perfect amounts of cookie dough, cupcake batter,  pancake portions and even meatballs. You should get a few different sizes to cover all these uses. 

We recommend Piazza scoops. They are really top-notch. They look and function as they did when we first got them years ago. They feel great in your hand and work really well. A bit pricey but worth the investment since you'll use them over and over again for years to come. 

We used the #40 scoop for these pancakes. For reference the scoop is 1 1/2" in width and it holds about 1.5 tablespoons of liquid. You can purchase if from Amazon: Piazza 1/40 Stainless Steel Ice Cream Scoop. But one slightly larger or smaller will work as well.