Drooling yet? I made this naturally sweet, healthy recipe for pancakes the other weekend. I used local wild blueberries and fresh peaches I purchased at Brick Works Farmers’ Market. Weekend breakfast is my fave meal of the week hands down. It’s the one morning meal that you can truly take your time to get it right and relax because you don’t have to rush off to work. Even better when you have ingredients you bought from your trip to the market – see a previous post about what I bought and tips for shopping.
You’ve heard many times that eating breakfast is a simple step to joyous health right? Here’s a friendly reminder why.
- Balances your blood sugar. Especially important for Diabetics, but why not start now so you don’t get to the point of having blood sugar imbalance?
- Balances your mood, prevents anxiety due to it’s blood sugar balancing effect, promotes feelings of “well-being”
- Fires up your metabolism (your calorie burning potential!). If you don’t eat something, your metabolism goes into energy-saving slow-mode. Translation? You burn fewer calories.
- Gets your bowels moving. Morning bowel movements are key for detoxifying the body. If you don’t get something in your belly, you slow down the bus. Interestingly, many clients I consult think they have regular BMs – take away the coffee and they don’t have a BM for days! Meaning, you can’t rely on coffee to have a morning BM.
- Skipping breakfast is going to promote 2 things: 1. Sluggish and sleepy between 2 and 4pm. 2. Out-of-control appetite in the eve.
So here’s my recipe – you’re going to love it! Remember you can easily make substitutions, which I will make note of as we go along. If you have a gluten intolerance, then you just swap it for a different flour. Making pancakes isn’t like baking a cake. It’s not an exact science and you can mix and match a bit.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup spelt flour (or brown rice flour for a gluten-free option)
- Half cup oat bran (omit for GF)
- 1 tsp gluten-free baking powder (aluminum-free)
- 2 cups of almond milk
- 2 happy eggs (from organic chickens of course)
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup wild blueberries
Method:
Combine the dry ingredients and then add the almond milk, whisked eggs, vanilla extract and lastly, fold in the blueberries.
A few things: You may wish to have your pancake batter runnier, so just add a touch of water to thin it out if you like. As well, if you don’t like blueberries, just swap for chopped peaches in the batter. Don’t over mix! Heat your pan to a medium temp and use organic coconut oil so the pancakes don’t stick. Please, don’t use polyunsaturated fat ie sunflower, canola, safflower for heating! Heat makes those unstable oils even more unstable ie. rancid and a danger to your health.
Flip when the sides of the pancakes start to get slightly firm. Due to the fact the batter is thick, the bubbling on top probably won’t happen and is not an indicator to flip, in this case – that only works with Aunt Jemina pancake mix (gross!).
See how fast they cook?? Meanwhile, here are the ingredients for your peach sautee. Also, you will need cinnamon, butter (or coco oil) and some sucanat sugar if you like. Don’t worry about measuring this stuff.
Slice up the peaches like so and avoid ones that are bruised or really soft. I used 4 or 5 small peaches.
Melt some butter (or coco oil) to lightly coat your pan. Toss the peaches with walnuts and sprinkle with cinnamon and a touch of sugar. Cook on medium until tender. This smells soooooo good!
This is what it looks like when done.
My plate – admittedly a little overexposed, but I’m not a food photog, I’m a healthy foodie – so please forgive! Everyone LOVED these pancakes. They were so naturally sweet you didn’t even need syrup – but the taste of Ontario real maple syrup is amazing. If you’ve never tried it, then you are in for a real treat.
This was the same morning. I’m just getting in a photo opp here with my peaches. Why not? I love real food!
Joy McCarthy, Registered Holistic Nutritionist and Health Coach of Joyous Health, loves to inspire others to eat well, live well and be happy. Joy provides complimentary 15 minute consultations.
Joy has clients from all over the world and consults via phone and Skype. Contact Joy today and take the first step to achieving joyous health.
I didn’t know that coffee makes you poo. News to me.
Yes, it stimulates premature evacuation. Many ppl use it for this reason, without realizing it.
Thanks for this. It’s a struggle to get my husband to have breakfast in the morning. He says he just can’t stomach anything at all at 5am and won’t eat until around 730ish. Is there a time limit on when you need to get something in your belly?
My unrelated question: how do you get your hair to stay so gorgeously smooth in this humidity!
5am is a pretty tough time for anyone to eat. Suggest he drink lemon and water (http://joyoushealth.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/an-alternative-to-lemon-water-and-a-new-green-goddess-juice/) or a green juice and then eat a little later – 730am is fine. Here are some breakie ideas: http://joyoushealth.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/not-sure-what-to-eat-for-breakfast-4-joyous-ideas/
Thanks for the compliment on my hair. I use shea butter on the ends… it’s like butter – so it keeps things tame. However, you haven’t seen my hair when it’s super humid – I have a serious afro!
Looks great Joy, but Teflon pan? For shame!
Ah well I was up North at my parents, one can only do so much when you are cooking at someone’s house. One baby step at a time – they eat pretty much all “real food”. Perhaps a Christmas present. They were using an iron pan, but then my dad’s iron levels were high so they had to stop using it.
My oh my, do those pancakes look and sound like a scrumptious way to start the day!
Great post thanks.
hi joy don’t know if you got the question i sent from my blackberry, so i ask again. what can one sub for eggs because i am a vegan?
Hi Lynne, sorry I don’t recall your message. Are you asking for as substitution for eggs in baking? If so, psyllium fibre works like a charm!
I made these this morning and they were SOOO yummy! I halved the recipe and ate all EIGHT pancakes by myself! I had a little trouble getting the batter to thicken up though. I’m not allowed to eat eggs right now so I used a flax egg in place of a regular, but I don’t think that should make that big of a difference. Also not allowed oat bran, would that help in thickening it up? I’m thinking I’ll just add less milk next time, because their definitely will be a next time!
You could use quinoa flakes instead of oat bran. Hang on… you didn’t eat all 8 in one sitting I hope?
that would be VERY filling!!
OMG JOY!!! You are sooooo creative! I love this
Oh… tried these with regular blueberries and could not get them to cook at all. I had to add more flour to the batter as it was too thin. Threw out most of the batter. I finally scooped out the berries and cooked up the rest of the batter but they didn’t rise very well.
Did you use spelt flour?