New, improved whole grain apple pancakes

I love it when, in the course of making a beloved recipe, I discover I don't have a key ingredient, substitute something else, and find that it tastes better than the original. Mostly my substitutions turn out terribly, but this one didn't.

I was making my whole grain apple pancakes for a family brunch, and realized I didn't have enough rolled oats. So instead, I made some porridge using steel cut oats and adjusted the ingredients accordingly. The pancakes came out deliciously! They have more "bite" to them than the previous version, and the taste and texture is vastly better, probably because steel cut oats are a very superior product to rolled oats. I took out the milk and added a smaller quantity of yogurt, which made the texture fluffier. I also love the tang of yogurt in any pancake or baking recipe. The batter is a little more liquid and finicky to work with than the previous version, but it will be fine, I promise.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup steel cut oats
1 1/3 cups water
1/4 cup ground flax seed
1/4 cup plain unsweetened yogurt
2 eggs
2 apples, grated with the skins on
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Half a stick of butter (2 oz or ca. 55g), melted
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder

First, prepare your steel cut oats. Mix them in a medium pot with the water, bring to a boil, turn the heat to low, and simmer for 20 minutes until cooked.

Transfer the oats to a large bowl and stir in the other wet ingredients.

In a separate bowl, mix together all dry ingredients. Tip them into the oat mixture and stir gently with a fork until just combined.

Melt a tablespoon of butter in a cast-iron frying pan over medium-high heat. (A non-stick pan is fine too, but I'd steer clear of a stainless steel one.) Using a 1/8 cup measure (or a large spoon), drop up to five spoonfuls of batter onto the pan. When little bubbles start to appear on top, flip them over with a spatula and cook the other side until it's a light golden brown, pressing down on the pancakes with the spatula to flatten them slightly.

Serve plain or with maple syrup.


Serves 4-6

Tea-infused apple-date loaf

I hadn't made this recipe for years, but discovered it in an old binder of recipes from when I was a student. I'm not a confident baker of anything but yeast bread, but this recipe is actually pretty hard to mess up. (A very pleasing quality in a cake, if you ask me.)

Soaking the fruit in tea seems eccentric, but it serves a dual purpose of softening it up before baking, and giving the finished loaf a delicate hint of tea flavor. The finished product is spicy and not too sweet. It was the perfect baking project for a fall Saturday morning. I took Baby B and Little Dog B for a short walk outside while it baked, and enjoyed the slight nip in the air and the spectacular orange and red leaves on the trees. When we got home, the house was filled with the delicious scent of the spices. Who needs a Starbucks pumpkin spice latte? (A thing I had never tried until someone bought me one recently. Very kind, but I didn't much like it--I prefer my coffee to taste like coffee, not sugary stuff.)

Ingredients:
2 cups diced apples (around 2 medium; no need to peel them first, unless you prefer them that way)
1 cup dates, chopped coarsely
3/4 cup freshly brewed strong black tea, boiling hot
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 oz unsalted butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup white flour
1/2 whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon cloves

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius). Spray an 8x8 baking pan with cooking spray, or grease it with butter. If the pan isn't non-stick, line it with baking paper.

Place the apples and dates in a medium bowl, sprinkle with baking soda, and pour the boiling tea over the top. Stir briefly, and leave to soften while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Cream the butter and sugar together with a silicone spatula. Stir in the vanilla and the lightly beaten egg.

Sift in the flours and spices, and pour over the fruit and tea mixture. Mix together until just combined--don't overmix or the cake will be hard. Pour the mixture into the baking pan, and bake for 45 minutes.

Let it cool in the pan before serving. I recommend having it with a cup of rather milky tea. Baby B had hers with milk.

Whole grain apple pancakes

Update: please also see this alternative version, where I used steel cut oats instead of rolled oats.

These are a big hit with Baby B, my 20-month-old daughter. They're also about as healthy as you can get a pancake to be. I can almost kid myself that they're healthy because the flour is 100% whole wheat. The ground flax seed holds everything together beautifully so you don't need the higher gluten content of white flour. You can add oat bran and wheat germ to make them extra fiber-rich if you feel like it, but no big drama if you don't.

Ingredients:
1 cup rolled oats (the old-fashioned kind, not the quick kind)
1/4 cup ground flax seed*
1 teaspoon oat bran (optional)
1 teaspoon wheat germ (optional)
3/4 cup milk (I used skim, but any kind would be fine, including non-dairy milks)
2 eggs
2 apples, grated with the skins on**
2 tablespoons brown sugar (you could leave this out to be extra healthy, but I find it improves the texture)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Half a stick of butter (2 oz or ca. 55g), melted
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder

Mix the rolled oats, flax seeds, oat bran (if using), wheat germ (if using), sugar, salt, cinnamon, milk, and eggs together with a fork.

Stir in the grated apple and the melted butter.

In a separate small bowl, mix the flour and the baking powder. Tip into the wet ingredients and stir with the fork until just combined. Don't overmix or the pancakes may be rubbery.

Melt a tablespoon of butter in a cast-iron frying pan over medium-high heat. (A non-stick pan is fine too, but I'd steer clear of a stainless steel one.) Using a 1/8 cup measure (or a large spoon), drop up to five spoonfuls of batter onto the pan. When little bubbles start to appear on top, flip them over with a spatula and cook the other side until it's a light golden brown, pressing down on the pancakes with the spatula to flatten them slightly.

Test out one of the pancakes before you take them all out of the pan to make sure they're cooked in the middle. The first lot may not be any good, but don't despair, this recipe makes a lot of batter and you'll have plenty of chances to make better ones.

Serve unadorned, or with butter, or maple syrup, or a dusting of icing sugar, or fruit, or...anything you like, really.

Serves 6



*This might not seem like a particularly frugal ingredient, but I can get a pound of it for absolute pennies in my budget supermarket's bulk aisle. You can get it pre-ground, but it tends to go rancid fast, so I buy the whole seeds and grind small quantities in my coffee grinder.
**You could peel them if you really wanted to, but I'm too parsimonious to waste anything edible.