Most of my cooking experiments are aimed at creating nutritious but tasty food for my growing boys. This was yesterday’s breakfast, which went down well and tasted like a stove-cooked muffin! You can mix the dry ingredients the previous night and only need to add the apple and the wet ingredients in the morning.
Makes 6-8 pancakes
Dry ingredients
1 cup (90g) porridge oats
1 cup (125g) whole wheat flour (atta)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon sugar or jaggery powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
¼ teaspoon salt
8 chopped walnuts or almonds (optional)
Wet ingredients 2 eggs or make it eggless (use 6 tablespoons milk/yogurt or take 2 tablespoons finely ground flax seeds, put in 6 tablespoons warm water and let it sit for 15-20 minutes until thick) 1¼ cups milk 1 tablespoon melted, cooled butter or vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla, if not using cinnamon
1 medium apple (150g) or ½ packed cup, peeled, grated or finely chopped
Butter or vegetable oil for frying
Method
1. Put the dry ingredients together first, in a large bowl. Mix the oats and flour together with baking powder and baking soda. Add sugar, cinnamon powder and salt and mix well. 2. In another bowl, mix the wet ingredients together. Make a well in the dry ingredients and fold in the wet ingredients. Add the chopped/grated apple. Mix gently until well blended. Let the batter rest for 15 minutes. 3. Add extra water or milk, only if needed, to get a dropping consistency. The batter must be thick and drop to form a round pancake – not runny, like dosa or crépe batter.
4. Heat a non-stick frying pan, put in a dab
of butter or teaspoon of oil. Pour one ladle (1/3 cup) of batter to form a round pancake, around 5” in diameter. Cook on low heat until bubbles appear. Flip the pancake over and cook for a minute on the other side.
You can also used the batter to make mini-pancakes or pancake poppers. Cook them in a kuzhi paniyaram pan (I used 1 teaspoon oil for 7 little poppers) or bake in a mini-muffin pan.
5. Serve hot, drizzled with honey.
