Mia Bakes: Pumpkin Protein Pancakes

 

And so, after using unsweeten applesauce in my protein pancakes for nearly forever, I decided to try using mashed pumpkins instead when I realised my neglected half of a butternut pumpkin is nearing the end of its shelf life.
Will it work? Let's find out! 

For 1 serving of 5-6 small pancakes, you'll need:

25g whey protein powder (I'm using My Protein Impact Whey Isolate)
10g oat flour 
18g oat fibre (about 2 tbsps)
120g raw pumpkin
1 egg
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda

First, wash your pumpkin clean and cut into thin slices. Steam for 10 to 15 minutes until it's fully cooked through and mash it up with a fork. Set aside to cool.
Crack your egg into a small bowl and separate your egg yolk and white. Place the egg yolk in a large bowl and add in the cooled, mashed pumpkin. Mix thoroughly to combine. Then, add in all the other dry ingredients (if your protein powder is not flavoured, add in 1 to 2 tsp of sugar to taste) and mix until just combined. 
Lastly, add in the egg whites and lightly stir until there's no more obvious snotty gloops of the egg whites. This trick is to ensure that you get thick and fluffy pancakes!

Cook the pancakes over medium heat on a lightly greased non-stick pan. Always remember to wipe away all excess oils on the pan before you spoon in your pancake batter to get a pretty, evenly browned surface on your pancakes. Cook for roughly 3 to 4 minutes on one side, until bubbles start to appear on the surface, before flipping it over. Then, cook for another 2 to 3 minutes, or until the surface springs back when you press down on it, indicating that it's fully cooked through. 
Pancakes made from whey protein tends to be rather dry, so always make sure to not overcook them. If not, you'll end up with a stack of cardboard. 

And tadaa~ These pancakes are thicc! 

As compared to the applesauce version, these pancakes are significantly denser, slightly mushier, and has a subtle pumpkin sweetness to it. Not exactly the best stack of protein pancakes, but it'll do when I run out of applesauce or when I need to finish up my half-eaten pumpkins!

Till then,

Mia Foo

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Mia Makes: Whey Protein Pancakes (with 2-ingredients chocolate sauce)

 On a diet, but craving for pancakes? 
What if I tell you, you can get your pancake craving fixed (with chocolate chips!) at only 350 kcals and still get 27g of protein? Sounds too good to be true?

But it is! So let's get over with the ingredients, so we can get started!

25g whey protein powder (I'm using My Protein Impact Whey Isolate)
10g oat flour 
18g oat fibre (about 2 tbsps)
120g unsweeten applesauce
1 egg
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda

Optional:
20g dark chocolate chips
a little sugar to taste, if your protein powder is unflavoured. 

First up, separate your egg whites from yolk. Nope, we're not going to whip the whites, but somehow adding the whites separately at the very end will give you thicker, fluffier pancakes. Try it!

In a clean bowl, add in the yolk and applesauce and whisk until fully mixed. Then, add in all the dry ingredients (except the chocolate chips) and mix until there's no obvious pockets of dry flour. Then, add in the egg whites and chocolate chips and fold the mixture until there's no more obvious streaks of snotty egg whites floating around. You need not fully incorporate (and risk over-mixing your batter) the whites into the batter. 

Cook the batter over the hob on a non-stick pan, as you would with any other pancakes (eg. flipping when bubbles start to appear on the surface).
If you still don't know, the trick to get an evenly browned pancake is to NOT add oil/butter to your pan (hence it better be non-stick). Just give it a quick spray with some non-stick cooking spray and be sure to wipe off any excess oil (if you can SEE the droplets of oil, that's excess) with a kitchen towel before pouring in your pancake batter. 

Tadaa~
I've used milk tea flavoured whey protein powder, hence I've a stack of Milk Tea Chocolate Chip pancakes, YUM!

Protein pancakes made with whey protein powder will always turn out rather dry, so while this recipe will give you thick and "fluffy" pancakes, do not expect them to be moist and tender. But, comparing to a "traditional" whey protein pancake (especially those from protein pancake premix), this fare a lot better as the applesauce helps to make it a little more moist, while oat fibre tends to create this moist-mushy texture in baked goods.

I usually eat my pancakes with some maple flavoured syrup or peanut butter, but this time I thought of trying out a simple recipe for some chocolate sauce. 

You'll need:
3 tbsp cocoa powder 
1 tbsp honey
water (add enough to get the consistency you desire)

adapted from wholeheartedlylaura.com

While the consistency of the sauce was perfect (drippy, yet not too runny), the taste was pretty.... "healthy". Perhaps it will work better with more sweetener, or to use drinking cocoa powder instead of the unsweeten kind I've used. If you've tried this recipe using drinking cocoa powder and it turned out well for you, do let me know in the comments section below!

Till then,

Mia Foo

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#cheatday breakfast recipes

Well, actually I can't even decide if I can call these recipes; perhaps just "procedures of assembly" will be a better phrase? 

Anyway, here's my current top 3 (+1 bonus) #cheatday breakfasts that I've been craving for these past few weeks/ months. 

#cheatdayeats breakfast, let's go!

First up, this black, shapeless.... thing. 

Which actually, is a peanut butter-ovolmatine chocolate chip baked oatmeal. Sorry, I could have chosen a mould of another colour but I don't have one. >.<

Preparation for this breakfast can't get any simpler, just grab a bowl and dump everything (listed  under ingredient list below) in, stir until well combined and transfer into your desired mould and bake at 190 degree Celsius for about 25-30 minutes (until it has dried up into a "cake").

I've also tried cooking it "pancake style" without a mould on a non-stick pan over the hob, on small to medium fire, and it works too, taking a shorter time of around just 20 minutes in total to get done, but you'll end up with pieces of torn up "pancakes" because they do not flip well. 

Doesn't matter if you're not making breakfast for The Gram, right? 

ingredient list

45g rolled oats

60g unsweeten applesauce

 1 tsp pyure (baking stevia blend)

1 tbsp creamy peanut butter

1 tbsp ovolmatine spread 

1 tbsp unsweeten cocoa powder

~2 tbsp milk 

(add more if oat-batter is too dry)

a pinch of salt

a handful (or more) chocolate chips

adapted from chocolatecoveredkatie

You can use other sweeteners like honey or maple syrup, but do adjust the amount of milk to get the correct pastey consistent of the oat-batter. 

And I always eat this topped with MORE ovolmatine spread or peanut butter (or BOTH!) which is why I'm taking it easier on the added sweetener, if you're planning to eat this as it is, perhaps you would want to increase the amount of sweetener too!

EDITED:

And so I deducted 5g of rolled oats (using only 40g) and added a tbsp of chocolate whey protein powder + 1 tbsp of wholemeal flour to the batter and they turned out so much easier to flip as flapjacks/pancakes! 

 But texture wise it's definitely slightly different as compared to the original baked oatmeal, as you can get tiny portions of "cakey" bits here and there in between the oats now. 

Next up on the list, FRENCH TOAST!

Did I mention that I LOVE breads?

There's many different variation to how I like my french toasts. Sometimes I sandwich some ham and cheese in between and turn it into a Croque Monsieur, sometimes I slather a thick layer of nutella/peanut butter/ovolmatine spread in between. sometimes I have them "plain" with some maple-flavoured syrup and butter. 

But now I'm showing you my most zhng-up (made fancy) version till date, niangao peanut cornflake-crusted french toast. 

This is two slices of thick wholemeal french toast with crushed cornflake crust, with slices of niangao (brown/coconut sugar glutinous rice cake) sandwiched in between, and then further topped with a layer of peanut butter AND ground peanuts on top. 

So first up, crush up some cornflakes, either with your bare hands or with a rolling pin, and set them aside in a plate that's big enough for your bread to fit in. Then, prepare your egg custard mixture as per usual (I usually do 1 medium egg to 1 tbsp milk, with a dash of ground cinnamon), and preferably do not sweeten your egg mixture as the nian gao will add ALOT of sweetness. 

First, dip your bread in the egg custard mixture until both sides are generously coated/soaked in the egg custard mixture and then plopped them onto the crushed cornflakes to coat. You'll have to get your hands a little messy here to make sure the breads are well coated. Pat the surface lightly to get the crushed cornflakes to stick better. 

In a non-stick pan, heat up a tablespoon of butter over low/medium heat and fry (one side of) both slices of your prepared breads at the same time. When the cooked side has turned golden brown, first flip just ONE of the two slices and lay your sliced nian gao over the cooked side, then pick up your other slice of unflipped bread and place it, COOKED SIDE DOWN, over the nian gao. 

Cover your pan with a lid and cook for however long it took you to cook the other side. Then, flip the entire sandwich over, cover the lid and cook for the same amount of time, and VIOLA~

Remove your french toast sandwich from the pan and slather on a thick (or thin, if you prefer) of peanut butter before topping it with some ground roasted peanuts. 

ingredient list

2 slices of your favourite (preferably) thick bread

(wholemeal, white, multigrain, whatever)

1 medium egg

1 tbsp milk

sliced nian gao 

(thickness according to your own preference)

crusted cornflakes 

(enough to coat both sides of your breads)

a dash of ground cinnamon

peanut butter

ground peanuts

salted butter (for cooking)

Next up, the final #cheatday breakfast on my list has to be PANCAKES (or hotcakes)!

Usually I'll make my own quick and super fluffy pancakes (recipe HERE), I just so happened to see this at Daiso recently.

credits to pinterest

Yes, Daiso now carries their own hotcake (Japanese style pancakes that's slightly thicker and with a sweeter taste) mix and I need to give it a try!
Making this can't be any simpler, just follow the instructions at the back of the package. HAHA!
They even give you the egg and no-egg versions. I followed the no-egg version as 1 egg is for the entire pack of 2 servings. I'm only making 1 serving at a time and I didn't want to use half-egg, so.... no egg it shall be!

The trick to getting that beautifully, evenly browned hotcake surface is to use as little oil as possible. So you heat up your oil in the pan and then literally go in and wipe off all visible streaks of oil on your pan, effectively you're just greasing your pan, not oiling it.

But I'm too lazy to do that extra step and butter shall NOT be wasted like that so I'll rather not have IG-worthy looking hotcake stack for breakfast. 

But of course, it's cheatday and I NEED to zhng-up my hotcakes too!

So I actually added two tablespoons of Nestum Multigrain cereal (and more milk to tweak the consistency) to my batter and a handful of chocolate chips into the batter for two of my 3 hotcakes. 

Without adding Nestum, half a pack should only yield 2 hotcakes instead of 3. 

ingredient list

daiso hotcake mix

2 tbsp nestum multigrain

milk

chocolate chips

salted butter (for cooking)

Last but not least, a bonus recipe from the talented Japanese youtuber, Ochikeron.
Tofu Brownies!

And of course, I zhng it up for cheatday by slicing it in half and slathering a thick layer of peanut butter and ovolmatine over it. 

I mean, sorry but these are diet-friendly healthy tofu brownies (~100 kcals per slice), even on non-cheatday I eat them with ice cream!

ingredient list

100g silken tofu

100g flour 

(I used wholemeal)

100ml milk

3 tbsp unsweeten cocoa powder

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

2.5 tbsp pyure (baking stevia blend)
30g chocolate chips
adapted from createeathappy
(watch Ochikeron's video recipe on how to make it)

Till then,
Mia Foo

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Mia Bakes: Super Quick and Easy Fluffy Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Because I recently impulse-bought Fifty 50 Low GI Maple Flavoured Fructose Sweetener (HERE) while carting out my usual purchase on iherb, I decided.... It's time for a pancake breakfast!

And since it's sunday cheatday, I decided to go big or go home and make some CHOCOLATE CHIP pancakes!

To get 3 thick and fluffy pancakes, you'll need:

85g top flour (or cake flour)

70ml milk

2 tsp to 1 tbsp powdered sugar

(do adjust the sugar according to your preference, and also based on the type of chocolate chips you're using. Eg. milk/dark/bittersweet etc)

(about) 2 tsp melted butter 

1 medium/large egg 

(yolk and whites separated)

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 baking powder

1/4 baking soda

30g to 35g semi-sweet chocolate chips 

(or however more or less you fancy)

First up, make sure all your ingredients (except melted butter) are at room temperature. Crack your egg open and separate the yolk and white. Set the egg whites aside and add your yolk into a big bowl along with the milk, melted butter, vanilla extract and sugar. Beat until well combined.

Add in the dry ingredients and fold until almost combined.

Almost meaning it would still be lumpy, but there's just minimal patches of pure white flour here and there. Then, add in your egg whites (you don't have to beat the whites into meringue!) and mix until just combined. You would still want your battery to remain lumpy but without any chunky remains of the snotty-looking egg whites. 

Finally, dump in all your chocolate chips and fold until just combined. 

Set your batter in the fridge to rest for about 10 minutes. 

After 10 minutes of resting, take your pancake batter our from the fridge and heat up your skillet/frying pan. I'm using a non-stick pan, hence there's no need to butter/oil it, but if yours isn't non-stick, lightly oil your pan and use a paper towel to remove any excess oils from the surface. Doing this will give you a well-browned pancake instead of patches of overly browned with "uncooked" parts all over. 

On the lowest heat, scoop 1/4 cup of your batter and pour it from about 3 inches height onto the pan to allow the batter to spread out into a circle on its own. Cook it on low heat until you see bubbles appearing on the surface, and quickly flip them over. Be sure to flip the pancakes when the uncooked, bubbly surface is still wet (a dry skin has not yet formed over the surface). This will allow the pancake to further rise up after getting flipped and grow thick and fluffy after they're cooked!

After flipping your pancakes, cover with a lid and cook for another 1 to 2 minutes.

And there you have it, thick and fluffy pancakes without the need to beat your egg whites into meringue!

And with a light drizzle of the pancake maple flavoured syrup (I only added 2 tsp of sugar to my batter), this is definitely the BEST Sunday #cheatday breakfast, ever!

Till then,

Mia Foo

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