The children are home from school with whooping-cough and cold respectively. Not fun. So we needed some cheering up and cooking pancakes was the answer. As we are pretty much a gluten-free household we needed to go to our trusted recipe of fluffy and sweet gluten-free pancakes.

Cooking gluten-free pancakes takes a bit of practice and in the past I used to want the pancakes to look large, thin and crepe-like. Like my childhood pancakes. But that is tricky without gluten. The glue in gluten binds the ingredients in the batter together and makes dough possible to stretch (you know the pizza baker trick) so without this you have to think out of the box.

Since I’ve started to make my pancakes smaller and fatter (they look more like American pancakes now) it works a treat. They also look distinctly home-made which I love. Sweetness is achieved by adding bananas or dates to the batter but this is entirely optional, although I can highly recommend it.

This morning I added a small handful of cashews into the mixture too but my children objected. ‘We already eat pancakes without gluten and dairy – can we at least ask not have bits of nuts in it too?” Fair point. I will of course keep trying but note to self, make the mixture smoother so that nuts are not detected in the first place. Here is how to make them:

GLUTEN-FREE PANCAKES

1 cup almond flour

1 cup coconut milk (add any coconut lumps in the milk too)

4 eggs (organic and free range)

1 banana or 4 dates

1 tbsp coconut oil or butter

1 tbsp nuts (pre-grind to avoid ‘bits’)

1. Add all the ingredients into a food processor. I find that the dates take a bit of mixing until they disintegrate nicely. If you are adding nuts then my top tip is to grind them prior to adding them to pancake batter as they may be too lumpy otherwise. I don’t mind a bit of crunch but if you have a tough audience, like children, you may need to reconsider.

2. Once the batter is smooth heat up your pan, add a bit of oil/butter and a dollop of batter into the pan. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look like a large pancake, the smaller, thicker size make them easier to flip with a spatula. Stack them on top of each other to keep warm. The first pancake is always a bit of a disaster so don’t worry, you soon get the hang of it. Stack and serve with lemon or fresh fruit. Enjoy. X