Lavender Pancakes

I found a recipe for lavender pancakes earlier this week. The girls and I had bought a bag of baking and tea-making lavender from Lavender By The Bay, a farm out on Long Island that sells on Saturdays at our farmers market. It's been sitting in our kitchen, waiting for something wonderful to make. I decided that this morning was the morning to try the lavender pancakes for breakfast.


I made some adjustments to the original recipe. My sister and niece had gone through a gluten-free (GF) phase. When it ended, I inherited their leftovers, including a HUGE bag of GF all-purpose flour. I didn't have any wheat all-purpose flour, so I used the GF AP flour.

Probably because of the GF AP flour, I found that I needed to add quite a bit more milk, and the batter still wasn't as runny as I expected it to be. When I spooned the batter onto the pan, I had to spread it out to make the pancakes. The batter was too viscous to go anywhere on its own. You can see in the photo above the results of not immediately spreading the batter as I spooned it onto the pan...the center circles are the plops of batter, the rest is the result of my expert spreading. :).

Still, the pancakes were yummy, if a little stretchy (again, I think a result of the GF AP flour). The lavender flowers added a subtle flavor when the pancakes were eaten right after cooking. The flavor was much stronger and more pronounced at lunchtime/dinnertime when Jacqui and I finished off the remaining three pancakes that weren't devoured by us and Dave at breakfast.

Here's my version of Vegan Guinea Pig's lavender pancakes.

Ingredients
1 ¼ cup gluten-free all purpose flour
2 T dark brown sugar
1 T lavender flowers
¼ tsp fine sea salt
4 tsp baking powder
¼ cup plain soy yogurt
¼ cup strawberry applesauce
1 ½ cup vanilla hemp milk
¼ cup organic canola oil

What to do
Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. (I had to smash up the brown sugar by hand because it had started to gel into balls, probably from the humidity in NYC.)
In a separate bowl, whisk the well ingredients together well.
Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, mixing well until you have a smooth batter.
Heat your pancake pan over medium heat. Using a ¼ cup, spoon the batter onto the pan. I had to then spread the batter out with the back of a spoon to make pancakes. (Otherwise, these would have been more like drop biscuits or scones.) Cook until the top is all bubbly and starting to dry, then flip over. The bottom should be a lovely golden brown. If it's still pale, then let it cook a little longer on that side before flipping.
Serve the pancakes with maple syrup for dipping or all alone.

The recipe made 15 4-in diameter pancakes for me, all of which were promptly eaten, leaving none to freeze for another day.

Tofu Pancakes Stuffed with Mushrooms and Spinach

After talking to my work cafe's chef about Vegan Brunch and the tofu omelet recipe that made me buy the book, I decided to make them for dinner last night.

I used the boxed silken soft tofu because that was the only thing the Met supermarket had. I also used 1/2 the black salt that the recipe calls for, arrowroot powder instead of corn starch, and the two garlic cloves suggested in the recipe.

Jacqui and Adrianna helped me get all the ingredients together into the food processor and helped me wash the mushrooms for the stuffing. Jacqui said that she *loved* each ingredient as we put it into the food processor.

Adrianna decided that I *had* to hold her as I was making the pancakes (as Jacqui called them) and making the filling.

Filling ingredients
one large box of white organic mushrooms, rinsed and chopped
1 T olive oil
fresh rosemary, tarragon, and oregano from my mom's garden, chopped
fresh spinach
grated vegan cheddar-style cheese

What to do
Heat the olive oil over medium heat while you start the first tofu pancake. Spread the pancake thin using a spatula.
Add the mushrooms and the chopped fresh herbs, and stir fry. The mushrooms will let out their juices, keep stirring and cooking until those have evaporated. Stir to make sure that nothing burns.
Make all of the tofu pancakes, placing them between two plates to keep them warm while you are finishing up the rest of the pancakes and the filling.
Jacqui and Dave grated the vegan cheese up.
To make the stuffed pancakes: put fresh spinach, mushroom mixture, and vegan cheese on one half of a pancake. Fold over, then heat over medium heat for 2-3 minutes, to let everything mush together a little. Serve and enjoy!

Outcome
Dave really liked these; I made his without the vegan cheese because he's a little wary of it. Jacqui loved the tofu pancakes and ate hers up without any help! Adrianna, once we broke the spinach up into smaller pieces, ate up a bunch too. Yay! :)

Grape Juice Pancakes

Saturday I made grape juice pancakes with J's help. The first one got a little burnt, so I ate it (much to J's upset, who really wanted the first pancake). She got the much tastier and less black but still blue second pancake and ate it all up all by herself. no help requried when breakfast is this yummy! Our toppings are Earth Balance, organic maple syrup (Grade B), and organic powdered sugar. After I made three, I added approximately 1/2 cup frozen blueberries to the remaining batter, which J had been asking for after we used them in our smoothies. She spat out the blueberry blue pancake, so that was not a hit with her. I ate one though, and thought it quite tasty.

Simple recipe
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour (Bob's Red Mill)
1 1/2 cup organic unbleached King Arthur's flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 cups grape juice (you can use any juice; this is what we had in the fridge -- grape juice makes BLUE pancakes, orange juice YELLOW/ORANGE pancakes.

Mix the dry ingredients together. Then add the juice and mix together gently (don't overmix). Heat up your skillet/pan and add some sunflower oil. Add batter (between 1/4 cup and 1/2 cup per pancake) and make it as thick or thin as you want. When the top is all bubbly, flip. (Don't forget, as you're making the smoothies, to flip the pancake, or you will end up with a blackened pancake and a beeping smoke detector.) Serve with some Earth Balance and maple syrup. Let J sprinkle a little bit of powdered sugar on top to make the blue pancakes even prettier!
If you want, add in 1/2 cup or 1 cup frozen blueberries to batter.
Makes six pancakes.

Smoothies
1 cup soy milk
1 cup orange juice
4 really ripe bananas, broken in half
1 cup frozen raspberries and strawberries
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
2 heaping spoonfuls of ground hemp protein
3 heaping spoonfuls of ground golden flax seeds
1 really ripe avocado

Put everything together in a blender (start with the wet ingredients first). Blend and serve.
Makes 3 servings.
J loves her smoothies. This version used up our really ripe bananas; normally we use frozen bananas, which gives the smoothies a completely different consistency.