Yummy Vegan Pancakes
April 20, 2012 6 Comments
When author and owner of Vegan.com, Erik Marcus, asked if I would be interested in taking on a photo shoot project for a groundbreaking new recipe from a well-known vegan cookbook author I was, naturally, ecstatic. I replied with an enthusiastic “YES!” without even knowing what the recipe was! So when he eventually sent the recipe including all ingredients and instructions, my boots began to shake and suddenly I became rather intimidated. The challenge was a palm-oil-free butter created by the genius chef Bryanna Clark Grogan and it appeared ever-so-complicated with all sorts of special ingredients. Liquid soy lecithin? Non-deodorized fair trade organic cocoa butter? All items not in my every day pantry and ones that I don’t have experience working with so the potential to mess it up was great. Plus I was running short on time and knew that I didn’t have days to play with it if I bombed on the first try.
My fears were largely caused by the fact that I knew I wasn’t creating the butter and doing a photo shoot for myself. Other people were depending on me and expecting it to be fabulous. Pressure! Eeeek!
In the process of scrambling to get a silicone mold and acquiring all of the ingredients, I also knew that I had to figure out how I was going to plate and present the butter for the shoot. And one of the first foods that comes to mind when I think of butter is pancakes (right there behind toast). Who doesn’t love to slather butter all over their pancakes before dousing them with maple syrup? This is pure comfort food to the highest degree for me.
During an afternoon trip to Union Square and Sur La Table I successfully acquired all of the dishes and items I needed for a butter photo shoot and I’m happy to share the results of that shoot as this is one of the photos I sent and was used to feature this amazing new butter recipe:
As for the pancakes, this particular version has been in my recipe box for over ten years and is written on a pancake-batter stained notecard that I officially labeled as “Yummy Vegan Pancakes.” When I first went vegan I tried all sorts of different recipes tweaking them to my liking and landed on this particular one as a favorite that I consistently use. I hope you like it!
Yummy Vegan Pancakes
This yields roughly a dozen pancakes.
Ingredients
- 1 cup white flour
- 1 cup whole wheat or whole wheat pastry flour
- 4 tablespoons baking powder
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups vanilla soy milk, almond milk, or any other non-dairy milk
- 4 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
- 6 tablespoons applesauce
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- additional oil for greasing the pan
Dry Ingredients: Combine dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt) in a medium bowl and mix well.
Wet Ingredients: Add the soy milk, oil, applesauce, and vanilla to another medium bowl and whisk until well incorporated.
Combine: Add the wet ingredient mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until the batter is moistened. A few remaining lumps is A-okay—do NOT over mix the batter.
Cook: Heat a lightly oiled frying pan or griddle over medium-high heat and pour 1/4 cup of batter. Cook until the bottom is browned, flip, and repeat on the other side. Serve with delicious maple syrup, vegan butter, and berries.
Fruit of Adventure 
I should not have looked at the pictures – groan – I had a protein shake for breakfast in real life, and pancakes like this in my dreams. Saving this recipe to try this weekend! Thanks so much, they sound (and LOOK!) positively yummy! 🙂
Hugs
SuZen
Haha, SuZen! Yes, you can certainly save it for another day 🙂 I love how you put that—eating a protein shake in real life, while the pancakes were eaten in your dreams. Perhaps we all (or maybe I’m just speaking for myself) need to exercise eating more not-so-healthy foods in our dreams… *typed while putting the half consumed bag of chips down and thinking about eating the rest in my mind instead..for now at least 🙂 * Also, I’m not saying that the pancakes are unhealthy, just that your comment made me think about exercising that idea with other not very healthy foods.
Yum, yum, and more yum! I’ve always loved applesauce in vegan baking recipes, and now you’ve got me craving some pancakes!
By the way, that butter looks REALLY good. I’ve been relying on the soy-free Earth Balance spreads myself, but maybe (a big *maybe*, if I can stock my pantry with some of those specialized ingredients), I’ll give the vegan butter recipe a go one day. Do you think soy milk is essential, or could I sub in unsweetened almond milk instead?
I too have been using Earth Balance for years—love the stuff! I just wasn’t aware of the extent to the rainforest degradation (and orangutan decimation) in Malaysia because of palm oil production. EB says that they purchase palm oil from responsible sources (30% from Brazil, while the other 70% from Malaysia), but I just don’t know what to believe: http://www.earthbalancenatural.com/responsibility/palm-oil/
As for subbing the soy milk with almond milk, this might work. I think what’s key here is for there to be fat and some sweetness…so perhaps try the plain almond milk if you’re going to go with a different non-dairy milk. It really will add only negligible amounts of sugar to the overall dish.
Thanks for the new pancake recipe, Christina. I MUST keep applesauce around the house. Must. It’s never here when it’s needed. Maybe those little tubs of applesauce, in order to avoid wasting a big jar?
Hi Kathy! Yes, that’s exactly what I do! I buy those snack packs that come with 6 little containers of apple sauce in my pantry at all times to avoid needing to keep an entire jar of fresh applesauce that inevitable will go bad before I use it all. One of the snack cups was exactly the amount needed for this recipe. 🙂