MollyMia Aspire to Inspire before we Expire
Showing posts with label healthy pancakes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healthy pancakes. Show all posts

Sunday, 2 August 2020

Mia Bakes: Yogurt Oat Fibre Pancakes

On a low calorie diet, need to hit your macros target for protein, but craving pancakes and hates those protein (powder) pancakes with a vengeance and would rather chew on cardboard instead?

Now, I got you covered.
With these, super low calorie, high protein, MOIST pancakes. 

To get a stack of 5 small pancakes, you'll need:

190g plain natural yogurt + a tiny pinch of salt
(or about 100g of plain Greek Yogurt)
1 egg
1 tbsp oat fibre
2 tsp stevia 
(or any amount of sweetener of your choice)
2 tbsp PB2 (powdered peanut butter)**
1/4 baking powder
1/8 baking soda
water or milk, if required (to tweak the batter consistency)

optional:
a few drops of vanilla extract
handful of chocolate chips

**feel free to substitute with plain flour and/or unsweetened cocoa powder if you do not wish to get peanut butter flavoured pancakes.

I used Farmer's Union 0.5% fat plain greek yogurt for the macros calculation and got the calorie count of the entire recipe (excluding optional ingredients) at only 193 kcals, with 20.1g protein, 6.8g fat and 24.2g carbs (total, not net carbs). Rather impressive, yes?
Do note that the PB2 added a substantial amount of protein to the recipe, hence if you were to swap it out for cocoa powder or plain flour, you should probably get a stack of pancakes with lower calories and lower protein count.



If you're using natural yogurt, you'll need to strain it overnight using a sieve with either cheesecloth, if you have one, or some coffee filter paper or tea filter paper will do the trick as well. Set your sieve over a bowl and lay the filter paper over it, spoon the natural yogurt into the sieve and sprinkle a tiny pinch of salt over it. Cover with a cling wrap and set in the fridge overnight. After 8 to 12 hours, it should be of a consistency that's even thicker than your usual greek yogurt. But of course, if you feel that this is too much of a hassle, you can simply use 100g of greek yogurt instead.

And to a clean bowl, add in the yogurt and crack in an egg and whisk until well combined, before adding in all of the remaining dry ingredients, mixing until the batter is smooth. There's no wheat flour in the recipe here, so no worries about overmixing your pancake batter. Depending on how big your egg is and how strained your yogurt is, feel free to tweak the consistency of your pancake batter with milk or just water to a thick, yet pour-able consistency.

Then, go on to heat up and lightly grease your non-stick pan. Pour the pancake batter onto the pan, it should spread out easily on its own. Do not try to make them too big, as they do not flip well (no flour, remember?). Cook the pancake over low to medium heat for 3 to 5 minutes, until bubbles starts to appear on the surface, and carefully slip them over to cook on the other side. As I said, these pancakes DO NOT flip well, so be extra careful when flipping them. Cook the pancakes on the other side for another 2 to 3 minutes, or until the top springs back slightly when you press lightly on them. They will also puff up considerably when just cooked, and deflates soon after leaving the pan (like souffle pancakes/baked cheesecake).

And tadaa~ My beautiful stack of 5 pancakes. 

If I'm adding chocolate chips to my pancake, I'll always make my first pancake without the added chips so that my stack of pancakes won't look spotty in the pictures. HAHA. 

But look at them! These pancakes are super, super moist and soft in the middle. Just like the gooey centre of a baked cheesecake. Well, it's almost just like eating cheesecake, but in pancake form, with the slight tartness of yogurt (you might want to add more sweetener if you're not a fan of the sourness of natural plain yogurt) and without the crazy calories. 
ENJOY! 

Till then,
Mia Foo


Tuesday, 7 July 2020

Mia Makes: 2-Ingredient Sweet Potato Pancakes

It's been months since I'm stuck in a work-from-home situation, and I'm also seriously running out of #eatclean lunch ideas. These days I've been just chopping up anything I can find in the fridge (chicken breast or white fish, chickpeas, tomatoes, zucchini, cabbage, mushroom, broccoli etc) and just stir-frying them together with a pinch of salt, some pepper and a few (generous) squirts of sriracha sauce before piling them onto a plate alongside some steamed brown rice or sweet potato.
And then I though, if I can get a stack of pancakes by simply adding egg into mashed banana (recipe HERE), can I get some pancakes by adding egg to mashed sweet potatoes too?

So, let's find out!

To get a serving of 2 (thicc) pancakes, you'll need: 
1 small/medium sweet potato (about 130g)
1 large egg (~55g out of shell)
a pinch of salt
adapted from thekitchn.com

First up, wash and clean your sweet potato thoroughly if you wish to keep the skin on for the added nutrient. Otherwise, peel the potato and cut into smaller chunks such that they'll cook quicker. Steam the sweet potato until it's fork tender and then mash it up (with a fork or in a food processor) into puree. Leave the mashed sweet potato to cool down for a little before cracking in the egg and mixing until you get a thick paste. Add in a pinch of salt to taste.

Then, drop (and spread) the batter onto a heated and well greased frying pan and cook on low to medium heat until the bottom is set (took me about 3 to 4 minutes). Check by lifting the edges to see that it'll hold up and whether the cooked surface is browned to your liking, then carefully flip the pancake over (they're rather fragile and break apart quite easily) and cook on the other side until evenly browned.

And tadaa~ your healthy, flourless pancakes are done!

I ate mine alongside some black pepper baked fish and roasted vegetables with nutritional yeast. 

You cannot go wrong with roasting broccoli and tomatoes for your choice of vegetables for any meal of the day. 

Frankly speaking, texture wise I won't even call these a pancake... at all. In fact, if you don't mind being a little bit more generous with the oil during "frying", you'll end up with something more like a begedil or hashbrown. These "pancakes" are slightly crisp on the surface, but soft and mushy on the inside and taste exactly like sweet potato, so much so that I totally questioned myself on why I wasted so much time and effort (pre-steaming, mashing, mixing, and cooking again) to come up with the exact same taste I could have gotten with just steaming the sweet potato whole and just biting into it. 
But well, I guess it's all for the #eatingfortheinsta trend too, huh?

Till then,
Mia Foo


Thursday, 14 May 2020

Mia Bakes: 2 (or 3) Ingredients Healthy Banana Pancakes

Craving for some pancakes, but you can't find flour anywhere? 
(well, actually you should be able to find them now, it's the "smaller things" like yeast and baking powder etc that's missing on the shelves these days)

Fret not, you can actually make yourself come yummy pancakes with just two ingredients (or three), and flour is not one of them! 

And it's some healthy, banana pancakes!

To get 1 serving of 2 to 3 pancakes (depending on the size you make them), you'll need:

1 medium over-ripe (spotty/browned) banana (around 120 - 130g)
1 large egg 
1/4 tsp baking powder
(to make them fluffier, but you may omit to keep to a 2-ingredients recipe)

Optional:
2 tbsp Rolled Oats or Green Banana Flour
(and you should be getting a stack of 4 to 5 pancakes)

First, make sure your banana (or bananas, if they're small and you're using 2) is over-ripen and spotty, if not it'll be hard to mash them up and your pancakes will also end up lacking flavour.
So, in a clean bowl, mash up your banana with a fork until you get a relatively smooth puree. Some small chunks are okay, if you wish to add more dimensions to your pancakes (eg. biting into chunks of bananas). Then, to the mashed banana, crack in an egg and mix until well combined. You may add in the baking powder for it to fluff up slightly while cooking, or just leave the leavening agent out completely.

Grease your heated non-stick frying pan lightly with some butter and use a kitchen towel to remove any excess oil. Pour the batter onto the pan and cook on low to medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes, until you see that the edges are set. Lift the edge to check that the base is nicely browned before attempting to flip. I have to warn you first, that this pancake batter is extremely watery and contains NO flour so flipping them can be a challenge, especially if you make them too big for your spatula, as they'll almost break instantly off the sides of your spatula when you lift them up.
I'll strongly suggest that you make them smaller than usual for an easier time while flipping them.
Cook the pancakes on the other side for another 2 to 3 minutes until they're browned to your liking.

And tadaa~
For more satiety factor, I've chosen to add in some rolled oats to make myself more pancakes. And while I've added 2 tbsp of pancake syrup to my pancake stack (of 4 pancakes), I felt that the pancakes are sweet enough (I've used an extremely spotty and soft Cavendish banana) on their own and the syrup was redundant. The subtle banana flavour of the pancakes go really, really well with peanut butter though. YUMS! 

And the 2nd time I made the pancakes, I decided to replace the rolled oats with green banana flour. 
And this time, the banana flavour came out strong. Initially I thought it's because of the green banana flour adding more banana flavour to the pancakes, but after using the flour for other bakes, I realised that the flour actually does not taste like bananas. So I reckon it's because I've used Malaysian banana instead of Cavendish banana this time, which has a stronger flavour. So yup, your choice of banana for this pancake recipe is very important! 

And as I've mentioned, these pancakes go damn well with peanut butter..... And also just for added moist-ness, I've added 1 tbsp of pancake syrup to my stack of 5 pancakes.

Till then,
Mia Foo