It was the breakfast hour on a Sunday morning here in the Nutrition Mechanic kitchen.
I opened the refrigerator and saw “leftover” freshly squeezed lemon juice from two days prior that needed to be used.
Since I’ve also been experimenting with some of the packaged pancake mixes for a few of my athletes, my mind went to lemon pancakes within about a millisecond. Helloooo, Sunday morning palate deeeelight!
Here’s the recipe:
Ingredients:
(yield of 10 pancakes)
1 c Birch Benders gluten-free dry mix
3/4 c milk (I used Califia Farms toasted coconut almond)
1 large egg
15 grams (by weight) of vanilla whey protein isolate powder, or about 1/2 scoop (I used this)
3 Tbsp shredded coconut, unsweetened
1 Tbsp lemon juice
zest of a medium-sized lemon
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 Tbsp slivered almonds
big handful of frozen blueberries, a little less than 1/3 c
Preparation steps: Mix all ingredients except the blueberries in a large mixing bowl. Heat a griddle pan on medium-high heat. Once heated, you can oil or spray with coconut oil (this is good to do if your griddle pan tends to stick). Spoon batter onto griddle pan (about 3-4” wide of batter per pancake). Top each pancake with 4-5 blueberries and let cook. Once the batter starts to firm up and you see the edges firm, flip carefully with a spatula. Remove from griddle when done to your liking.
You can see there isn’t that much lemon in the recipe, but the zest makes a difference. Plus, it really doesn’t take require much lemon to provide a delicious lemon accent to baked goods and flapjacks.
Basic nutritional info per pancake:
92 calories
11 gm carbohydrate (~2 gm fiber / ~2 gm sugar)
3 gm protein
4 gm fat
3.5:1 carb to protein ratio
If you’re eating these as part of a regular meal (i.e., not right before a workout), I suggest including more protein since these are fairly light on the protein side. You can always tinker with the recipe to boost protein or consider adding a side of eggs, your favorite vegetarian protein, or a topper of nut butter or a quality yogurt.
And these don’t have to be eaten as part of meal. I love flapjacks as an option for athletes who want to use their own homemade goodies for certain types of workout fueling. You can make a sandwich out of flapjacks (halving them if you want smaller pieces), pair it up with a squeeze pack of nut/seed butter or coconut oil, or eat them as is.
Enjoy and as always, tag @mechanicdina on Facebook or @nutritionmechanic on Insta if you make these! I gotta know, my fellow flapjack lover!
Other recent flapjack recipes:
Pumpkin (using Birch Benders base)
Upgraded Kodiak Cakes (using Kodiak base)
Your Flapjack Fiend,
Dina