Recipe Wednesday - Banana Pancakes

Baby Charlie LOVES his fruit. He also loves his pancakes. When I was little we had a DC Super Heroes Super Healthy Cookbook.



One of my favorite recipes of all time was Invisible Banana French Toast. I decided to try to combine bananas and pancakes, but not in the traditional sense of blending the fruit into the batter. Instead of mixing it all together and ending up with banana-flavored pancakes, I sliced the banana and dipped each slice into the pancake batter.

Banana Pancakes

Made using King Arthur's Simply Perfect Pancake Recipe

1 or 2 bananas, sliced into "wheels"

For the pancake batter:

2 large eggs

1 1/4 cups milk

3 tablespoons melted butter or vegetable oil

1 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 cup malted milk powder (or 2 tablespoons sugar)

1. Beat the eggs and milk until light and frothy, about 3 minutes at high speed, using a stand mixer or hand mixer. Stir in the butter.

2. Whisk the dry ingredients together to evenly distribute the salt, baking powder and malt. Gently and quickly mix the dry ingredients into the egg mixture. Let the batter rest for at least 15 minutes to thicken.

3. Heat an electric griddle to 350 degrees or heat a heavy frying pan over medium heat. Lightly grease the griddle or pan; it is ready if a drop of water skitters across the surface and evaporates immediately. Drop batter by the 1/3 cupful onto the griddle or skillet per pancake. Cook on one side until bubbles begin to form and break, then turn the pancakes and cook the other side until brown. Turn only once. Serve immediately.

This is where I deviate from the recipe. Instead of dropping batter into pancakes I slice up a banana or two, dip them in the batter, and then stick them on the pan. They usually take no more than 30 seconds on each side. I use the rest of the batter to make regular pancakes once I've made enough banana pancakes to satisfy the Minion.

The best thing about this particular pancake recipe is that it's very simple to make. You can do it start to finish in about 10 minutes on a Saturday morning. I imagine that the banana pancakes would freeze well, but there are never enough left to find out!