Healthy Treats: Pecan Oatmeal Blueberry Pancakes Recipe for

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Healthy Treats: Pecan Oatmeal Blueberry Pancakes Recipe for the Weekend
July 23, 2011 in Healthy Recipes

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Yes, you read that right. Pecan, Oatmeal and Blueberries, in pancakes. This recipe for healthy pancakes has everything you love in a pancake but is packed with healthy nuts, fruit, fiber and oats. These are shown with butter and a sprinkle of confectioner’s sugar but this is only for a weekend treat.

(After a long week of working out and eating clean, having something you enjoy on the weekend, is a good idea for most diets. If you training for a competition or something more serious, be sure to check with your nutritionist or coach before touching any treats.)

I’ve always been on a quest to create a healthier pancake that still tasted great. No matter how badly I want to stay in shape , I love a stack of pancakes on the weekend. The best way to make pancakes a little bit less of a guilty pleasure is to include three things that you really should enjoy more of anyway — berries, nuts and oatmeal. You can also use a little bit of pure maple syrup (contains antioxidants) and these will be a weekend treat that is also a pretty healthy breakfast choice.

The basic ingredient is still a “complete” pancake mix. Fiber One™ Complete Pancake Mix is a good base. It has great taste and texture and adds some extra fiber to the recipe. If you’re avoiding gluten, Bob’s Red Mill makes a bunch of varieties without any gluten as well as whole grain. You can expand this recipe to any size by just making the basic pancake mix (complete mix and water) per the recipe. The trick is to adjust the consistency of the batter so that it behaves like normal pancake mix even after you’ve added all of the extra goodies in this recipe.

Since most of the batter in your typical “complete” pancake mix is just white flour, using a different base and adding plain oatmeal is a big step toward improving that. But putting dry quick oats into a pancake mix can leave you with a little bit of sawdust in your mouth because even quick oats can’t really cook in the middle of a pancake on a griddle.

After some experimenting, I found that if you pre-cook your oats for 30 seconds before putting them into the batter, they will mix and cook perfectly once on the griddle. Adding in some crushed pecans (or nuts you like) and blueberries creates a pancake with texture and flavor like you won’t believe.

Ingredients (makes 8-10 medium pancakes):

1 cup Fiber One™ Complete Pancake Mix
3/4 cup of water for pancake mix
1/4 cup of quick oatmeal (1-minute type)
1/2 cup of water for oatmeal
Splash of milk
1/2 cup crushed pecans
1 cup of blueberries

Directions:

Heat up your pancake griddle. I like to spray mine with non-stick spray thoroughly and then wipe off the excess with a paper towel. This results in a stick free surface that you don’t have to respray as long as it stays hot. Your griddle will be hot enough when a few drops of water tossed on the griddle ball up and dance on the surface.

Combine oats with 1/2 cup water and microwave in a small bowl for 30 seconds. Then, add a splash of milk to cool. Stir and set aside.

Combine in large mixing bowl the complete pancake mix and water per directions on box. Pour in oatmeal mixture and mix together with the pancake mix. Add nuts and mix well. At this point, before you add the blueberries, test the consistency. It may be a little too watery because of the oatmeal mixture and you don’t want the batter to be too thin. Because of the size of the blueberries, you want your batter to be thick enough so that the blueberries won’t bulge out both sides when cooking. That just results in burnt berries and uncooked pancakes. To thicken up your batter, just add more complete mix and whisk it up. Then, when it’s perfect, add your blueberries.

Pour a big spoonful of batter onto the center of your griddle and cook just one pancake to make sure the griddle is hot enough and not too hot.

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In about a minute or less, you should see drying and bubbles of the batter around the edge of the pancake and you can flip it. If the other side is golden brown, you’re golden.

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Let that one cook on the other side for a minute and remove. Put another 3 or 4 spoonfuls on the griddle and repeat.

In the photo, we have added butter to each of the pancakes and topped them with warm real vermont maple syrup but they’re good without butter or syrup. If you want to enjoy these without butter or syrup, you can make a quick berry coulis in the blender and top them with that. One or two strawberries and/or blueberries in the blender with a dash of syrup will be better than just syrup.

AliV91

I take regular oats and grind them into flour in my blender. That works well in cakes. I haven't tried it in pancakes yet, maybe this weekend...............................