Vegan Banana Nut Pancakes

July 28, 2007 at 9:32 pm (breakfast, B_minus (2.5 stars), Derek's faves, Isa C. Moskowitz, Quick weeknight recipe, Soymilk)

Vegan with a Vengeance has quite a few vegan pancake/waffle recipes. Derek likes this one the best. The first time I made them, Derek went bananas over these pancakes. His rhapsody: “fluffy and wonderful, creamy without the cream, better than any pancakes I ever made (including our usual oatmeal walnut yogurt pancakes) .”

Ingredients:

• 1.25 cups very well-mashed banana (about 3 small/medium bananas, or about 10 oz or 285 grams of peeled banana)
• 1.5 cups soy milk (about 12.75 ounces or 360 grams)
• 1 teaspoon vinegar
• 1 tablespoon oil (recipe says canola but we use olive)
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1.5 cups all-purpose flour (We use 1 cup whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup white)
• 1.5 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup pecans or walnuts, roughly chopped
• oil or butter for the pan

Instructions:

1. In a large bowl, add the banana and mash it until fairly smooth. Then add the soymilk, vinegar, and soymilk to the bowl. Let sit for 5 minutes.
2. In a small bowl, mix together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet and mix, but be careful not to overmix or the pancakes will be a bit tough. Fold in the nuts.
3. Brush a large skillet with oil and heat over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. Working in batches of three, pour 1/4 cup of batter per pancake into the hot skillet and cook until bubbles appear on the surface and the undersides are golden brown, 1 to 2 minutes. Flip the pancakes with a spatula and cook until golden brown and cooked through, 1 to 2 minutes more.
4. Transfer pancakes to a large plate, and serve with sliced bananas and maple syrup.

My Notes:

Supposedly this recipe makes 9 small pancakes, but when I use my cast iron skillet and made three 1/4-cup pancakes per panful, we usually end up with about 12 normal-sized pancakes.

My original notes:

The recipe calls for 1.25 cups mashed banana, and I figured 2 normal-sized bananas would be enough, but mashed they only made about .9 cups. So I added a touch of extra water to make up for the difference. The recipe calls for pecans, but says any nut or chocolate chips can be used. I used walnuts.

I don’t know if I had my pan too hot, or if it’s just the nature of the recipe, but the inside of these pancakes was slightly gooey. They were definitely fat and fluffy, but also gooey. I prefer a drier pancake, but Derek loved the texture. If I made these again I would substitute some of the white flour with whole wheat flour or oat flour. Also, the flavor seemed a bit weak–I could taste the banana, but I thought they needed a bit more flash, maybe more vanilla extract, or black pepper? I used vanilla soymilk, but these weren’t particularly sweet. Since they weren’t that sweet I would have preferred them a bit more salty I think.

Note that though these don’t have much added oil, they are *not* low calorie. Even stretching the batter to about 13 pancakes they have about 150 calories each. That’s fine if you just have 2, but if you have two plates full, that’s 900 calories for breakfast, before you count the maple syrup and any extra buttery-type stuff you add.

I think the pancakes could use a touch more salt and cinnamon.

Rating: B
Derek: A

Update July 2010:

This weekend Derek wanted pancakes, but we didn’t have any eggs. He tried the regular “straight up pancakes, just like at the diner” recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance.  The recipe made a very liquidy batter that resulted in very pale, thin pancakes.  The pancakes had a nice cinnamon flavor, but they lacked substance of any sort.  They’re basically just white flour, oil, and maple syrup.  I’d rather have cake.  Derek said that they were good, but a bit “artificial tasting somehow.”  I think maybe what he’s picking up on is that there’s no real food there.  Then he said “they’re not really artificial tasting, they just have a funny texture.”

Rating:  B-
Derek: B

Update Nov 2015:

I made a quick non-vegan banana pancake recipe to use up some overripe bananas this morning. Derek liked them a lot so I thought I’d quickly write down what I did. I started with this recipe then altered it a bit:

• 2 bananas, very ripe, mashed
• 1 egg + 1 egg yolk, beaten
• 1 cup milk (I used a mix of soy milk and cow’s milk)
• 1 Tbsp. date syrup
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 cup flour (I used a mix of ground oats, whole wheat flour, and teff flour)
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt (I omitted this so Alma could eat them as well)
• pecans (I chopped them coarsely and sprinkled them on our pancakes, but not on Alma’s)

Update Feb 2016:

I made this recipe with half ground oats and half whole wheat flour, and for the milk I used a mix of cow’s milk and soymilk. I reduced the salt slightly for Alma. They came out well. Derek said he thought they were excellent.