One of the main reasons I decided on this recipe was it had a large yield, meaning I knew we would have plenty of leftovers to pop in the toaster oven for quick breakfasts! Rather than using completely all-purpose flour for the dry ingredients, which one can certainly do, I swapped half of it for whole-wheat pastry flour to nudge the nutritional value up. If you have access to it, white whole-wheat flour would also fit in well here without worry about weighing the pancakes down.You may look through the instructions and wonder what's up with calling for a food processor... why the use of heavy duty equipment for just pancakes? To make them a bit more hearty, a couple cups of oats will be added into the mix. However, a portion of the oats are added with the dry ingredients and are then whirled in the processor to coarsely grind them down. This way, you'll end up with contrasting textures between the ground oats and ones left whole.
To create the batter, milk, eggs and a little oil were swirled into the dry ingredients, which we did while we waited for our griddle to come to temperature. You can make these plate-sized pancakes with a couple extra minutes on the pan, but we kept them smaller - using around three tablespoons of batter, we ended up with pancakes that were roughly 3 1/2" to 4" across... about the size of my palm.
The pancakes do have a heft to them from the oats, but they weren't too dense or gummy - they cooked to a decent thickness with a fluffy interior. If you wanted to embellish them a bit more, cinnamon chips to echo the flavor in them already or even a handful of chocolate chips (um, yes!) would be nice to toss in. Or, once you drop the batter onto the skillet, arrange some sliced bananas over the top! Even without any of those add-ins, as we did tonight, these pancakes did not disappoint with their nutty notes - a pat or two of butter and a drizzle of pure maple syrup later and our stomachs were happy and content!
Vera - Thank you!
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