Back to Basics - Pancakes and Waffles

♥ Proper Canadian style thick, light and fluffy pancakes! ♥

♥ Guess what I got for Christmas?? ♥

Now I know I just said in my last post that I was going to be focusing on healthy eating, less baking and reducing my white flour and sugar this year and I assure you I haven't failed already! My standard pancake recipe is something I have been meaning to blog for years, we do after all have them once a week and have done so for a few years now. I even based the Carrot Cake Pancake recipe on this one and still didn't manage to blog it!

Well, this Christmas my lovely in-laws got me a waffle maker - something I've wanted for a long time and while there are a lot of vegan waffle recipes out there I just had to try my standard pancake recipe in it first, and guess what? They turned out beautifully! This gave me the perfect opportunity to not only finally blog the pancake recipe but a waffle one as well :-)

Funny thing about my pancake recipe, the waffle maker is a Gordon Ramsay one (yeah, I don't like him either!) and it came with a recipe book and his basic waffle recipe is almost identical to my pancake recipe but with eggs... if I had that recipe blogged already I'd have thought the dude copied me! :-D

~Recipe Notes~

A few notes on the recipe, it uses sparkling water to help give lightness and rise by reacting with the baking powder. I always use the sparkling water at room temperature but I'm not sure chilled will make any difference. As for the milk, I've only used soy milk so far with the waffles, I have used soy, rice and coconut with the pancakes and they all work great but you get the thickest pancakes with soy milk (as in photo). This is down to the higher protein content in soy milk, almond milk is similarly high in protein and would work too :-)

Pancakes or Waffles - makes 5 seven inch round waffles or 10 medium / 15 small pancakes.

280g plain flour or 2 cups
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
30g caster sugar or 2 Tbsp, can also use granulated
300ml dairy free milk - see notes above
120ml sparkling water
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

Whisk the dry ingredients together. In a pyrex measuring jug mix together the milk, vanilla and oil give it a mix with a fork then pour over the dry ingredients. Now pour the sparkling water over and whisk the whole lot together gently until it all just comes together in a batter. Do not overmix or whisk until it is super smooth, little lumps are ok, over mixing will give you tough rubbery pancakes or waffles. I also like to add the sparkling water last like that so it first reacts with the flour and fizzes up, if you add it to the wet ingredients first I find it already loses some of it's fizz action.

For waffles simply use as per your waffle maker's instructions.

For pancakes I lightly grease non-stick pans and preheat, when hot pour on the batter, I like smaller pancakes and use a 1/3 cup scoop. 1/2 cup scoop will give you slightly bigger pancakes. When they start to bubble on top have a little peek underneath that they are golden brown then flip over. I usually turn the hob down to minumim when I flip to ensure these cook thoroughly, as they are quite thick you do have the risk of golden brown pancakes on both sides but with a raw, doughy centre - not good!

For both waffles or pancakes I always have the oven preheated quite low, 80 - 100C, and keep the cooked ones warm while I make the rest, then we can sit down and eat together :-)

These also freeze beautifully, for waffles just let them cool completely, separate into 4 wedges then place in freezer bags as you can toast them straight from the freezer for yummy instant vegan waffles! Just slather them with your vegan butter of choice and fill those little pockets with lots of maple syrup! We also like to have the pancakes with some raspberry jam, and have had the waffles with some raspberry compote that you see in the picture there, just some defrosted frozen raspberries mixed with some caster sugar - it makes it's own sauce, easy!

♥

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