I'm Not Fooling Anyone Good-For-You-Pancakes

I'm Not Fooling Anyone Good-For-You-Pancakes

I'm big into making a game out of making food healthier by either adding a secret ingredient (there's wheat germ in your smoothy-ta da!), substituting an ingredient for something healthier (like smurf farts for oil), or just plain making something good out of a shocking ingredient (like the chocolate cupcakes I made out of black beans). I love watching someone enjoying something I've "secretly" made healtheir and then delivering the big reveal after they've finished it--There I sit, on the edge of my seat waiting for some sort of outlandish reaction that I never get because my husband likes pretty much everything, and my kids think broccoli and endamame are special treats. Kids: There's black beans in the cupcakes? Hooray, we love black beans! Me: Damn it. Husband: I don't know why you take so much pleasure in trying to trick us. We don't care. One of these days I'm going to trick you by making chocolate cupcakes out of the cat and wait to see if you notice. Me: You can't make me cupcakes out of the cat because eating the cat is not vegetarian, so there. (real conversation)

These pancakes aren't fooling anyone, though--they're made out of oats, for christsake. So here it is ahead of time: They're full of fiber, have a considerable amount of protein, are low in sugar, have added Omega 3s, and no cats were injured in the making. So there, I've said it. Eat up.

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Pancakes

Here's What You're Gonna Need:
1 1/4 cups Old Fashioned Oats (not instant!)
1 1/2 cups skim or 2% milk

1 egg
3/4 Tbs canola oil

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour (if you can't find whole wheat pastry flour, regular whole wheat flour is fine)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground flax seed
1/2 tsp cinnamon

optional: no sugar added mixed berry or plain applesauce

And Here's What You're Gonna Do:
Combine oats and milk in a medium sized bowl and let sit for five minutes so the oats have a chance to soak up some milk and soften a little. While you're waiting, preheat your griddle or skillet over medium heat.

Beat the egg and milk in a separate bowl, then mix into the the oats. Add the dry ingredients (the last group) and mix until they're just blended (over-mixing = sticky pancakes).

Spray a skillet preheated over medium heat with a little pam, cook 'em, flip 'em, and cook the other side (about 3 mins per side, depending on thickness). The flax seed in these pancakes is going to make them brown faster, so spread the batter thinish and be sure to smash your pancakes down with the spatula when you flip them if yours are on the plumper side so the interior cooks as quickly as the exterior.

I usually top oatmeal pancakes with some sort of applesauce (berry or regular) instead of syrup. It tastes great and keeps the blatantly healthy theme going.

Post Script: As it turns out, I have been poisoning myself with apples here when I could be injecting good-for-you maple syrup. See Anna's comment below. Phew-glad she loves my health almost as well as she loves biology!

Smitten By My Stove Zucchini Banana Bread

Disclaimer: I can't personally vouch for the awesomeness of this creation since mine turned out, well... in the garbage can. But that's because the kitchen gods smote me, not because the recipe sucks. Here's what happened. I wanted to bake something for my friend Meg, who was good enough to find Ella some hand-me-down uniforms for this upcoming school year. Meg wears ironed aprons, has perfectly parted hair, and served us grilled angel food cake with strawberries on china for a play date snack. I even had a saucer for my coffee. This, after I offered up a frozen pizza and whatever the kids could find on the kitchen floor when she came to our house. Needless to say, I needed a pretty good baked good for this domestic diva, so I fancied up a traditional banana bread recipe, poured the batter into my best bread pan--the one without the rust on the bottom--popped it in my oven, and waited for its glorious completion. I wasn't sure how long it would take since this was a new creation and I like my bread moist (that sounds like it should be dirty, but I can't think of how), so after 30 minutes I pulled it out to check on it. After stabbing the bread with a kabob stick I decided it still had a while to go and opened the oven door to put it back in. Only instead of opening like a normal oven would do for a normal cook, my oven door fell apart in my hands. With an underdone bread in one hand and an oven mitt in the other, I first caught the door handle as it pulled off the door, then the door frame and, finally, the glass panel from the front of the oven. Yet somehow, through all of this, the door itself did not open. "Steve, I need you!" I shouted to my husband upstairs. "Come quick, it's an emergency!" "Oh, *%$!," he proclaimed as he ran into the kitchen and grabbed a screw driver. "No time for fixes!" I shrieked, "Get the crow bar and pry open the oven! I'll hold the glass and the front of the stove for the next 15 minutes! We need to get Meg's banana bread back in there, STAT!" Steve, who knows nothing about aprons, or play dates, or parted hair, did not share my sense of urgency to save the bread and instead saved the oven door. By the time he was done, it was too late. I tried to make him eat the underdone bread as a punishment, but the batter stuck in his throat. Anyway, mine ended up in the garbage can, but if you're not in possession of demon appliances I'm sure yours will be divine.

Smitten Zucchini Banana Bread

Here's What You're Gonna Need:
(as always, divided into groups for those like myself with kitchen ADD)

1 cup white flour
1 cup wheat flour
1 cup oats (rolled or quick or stolen from a horse or whatever)
1/2 cup wheat germ
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt

4 eggs

1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup applesauce
2-3 overripe bananas (The grosser the better. Unless they have fruit flies. That's too gross.), thoroughly mashed.

1 tsp vanilla

2 smallish or 1 big honkin green zucchini--shred, then give it a quick squeeze in a paper towel to get some of the moisture out.
1 cup walnuts and/or whatever makes you happy (raisins, chocolate chips, bacos, whatever)


And Here's What You're Gonna Do:

Preheat oven to 350. Grease 2 9X5 loaf pans or at least 2 muffin tins.

Whisk together the first group of ingredients (flours, wheat germ, oats, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt).

In a different big bowl, beat the eggs. Add the sugars, oil, applesauce and mashed bananas. Add vanilla and mix it all up.

Pour the dry ingredients into the big bowl of wet ones and stir until just combined. Fold in the zucchini, walnuts, and whatever else you got.

Pour into loaf pans.

Bake, I'm guessing, 45ish mins for bread, 35ish for muffins, or until your favorite baking stabber comes out dry.

Then please mail to my friend Meg and say it's from me.

How to Rock a Blueberry Muffin (Instead of a Doughnut)

In a (failed) attempt to distract myself from Dunkin' Donuts, I rocked some blueberry muffins with my super hero health powers the other day. And because I'm caring as well as magical, I shall share with you my healthier version of an old classic. They're a little time intensive (but that's probably just because I have kitchen ADD--add some flour, eat a snack, etc), so we're making a big ass batch here. They freeze really well, so stash some away for the next time the doughnut demons come stalking you.

Here's what you're gonna need:
(I split ingredients into groupings of when you'll need them because without a visual reminder I just keep adding stuff to the bowl with complete disregard for the rightful order of things. Again, kitchen ADD.)

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons milled brown flax seed
--
1 stick + 6 tablespoons unsalted butter* (room temperature or slightly softened in the microwave)
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
--
4 eggs
4-5 (depending on size) crazy old bananas (like, you want these suckers are borderline gross)
2/3 cup 2% milk
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
--
2 1/2 cups frozen blueberries (organic wild blueberries work best, b/c they're smaller and usually more flavorful, but don't let your possession of regular frozen blueberries stop you from rocking these muffins)

*(I know this seems like a lot of butter, but we're actually substituting flax seed for the even greater amount of butter it would take to make these muffins if we weren't rocking them. And remember, it's nothing compared to the nutritional value of the doughnut from which we're trying to distract ourselves here. I only had 6 tablespoons of flax seed, or I might have tried switching out even more for less butter. If you dare tinker around here, try substituting 3 more tablespoons flax seed for 1 tablespoon butter. Let me know how it goes, Dr. Frankenstein.)

And here's what you're gonna to do:

Preheat your oven to 375. Line two 1 dozen muffin tins with paper liners.

In a large bowl, whisk/blend/sift/put a lid on the bowl and shake/mix with your hands the flour, wheat germ, baking soda, salt and flax seed.

In another big bowl or in your mixer, beat butter, sugar and brown sugar until fluffy and lovely. Add in the eggs one at a time, beating after each one.

In yet another bowl (we're making a grand mess here, folks), mash the hell out of those verge-of-rotten bananas, then stir the milk and vanilla into your beautiful banana mess.

Put your mixer on low and add the flour mixture and the banana mixture to the butter and sugar mixture. The flour and bananas are going to have to take turns here, going flour stuff, banana stuff, flour stuff, etc into the bowl. Try to end on a flour stuff and for God's sake, don't over mix it. Tip: If you have one of those plastic flexible cutting board dealies, fashion it into a shoot and pour the flour down it and into the mixing bowl, so as not to blow flour all over your kitchen like I did the first (and second) time I rocked these muffins.

Fold in the still frozen blueberries.

Very lighty spray your paper liners, and add the muffin mix. You'll get about two dozen regular size muffins, plus maybe three or four of those big ass ones (you have to have a special pan for such a thing) that are great because you can pretend you're only eating two muffins (reasonable) when in reality you're eating the equivalent of four (less reasonable).

Bake for about 25 minutes, or until your poking-at-things stick comes clean. Let them cool for a minute, then turn them out onto a rack to finish cooling. (Then drive to Dunkin' Donuts and get yourself a chocolate glazed doughnut to tide you over while you're waiting for them to cool.)

Enjoy!