SUPER SIMPLE PANCAKES (Egg-free)

Our daughter is allergic to eggs so use an easy egg-free pancake recipe in our home. The recipe is straightforward and results in delicious pancakes. Feel free to experiment with add-ins! Our daughter's must have is chocolate chips. Chopped strawberries are also great.

We have also crafted a modified version which swaps out some all purpose flour for almond flour to add nutrition. Find that recipe here: Pancakes with Almond Flour (Egg-free).

Once I was in a bind as I had no all purpose flour and had promised these to my daughter already. I improvised and made oat flour by blitzing some oats in my vitamix. It worked really well, she loved them - so that would be a nice way to make these gluten free!

Ingredients

Here they are as part of an spring brunch spread.

1 cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
2 teaspoons Baking Powder
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1.5 Tablespoons Sugar
1 cup Milk (I use whole milk, non-dairy milks work too)
1.5 Tablespoons Vegetable/Olive Oil
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/3 cup mini-chocolate chips (Optional. Quantity is really up to you!)
A little butter (or other fat) for the skillet to cook the pancakes on

Directions

Sift flour and baking soda and powder and salt in a bowl. Add sugar and whisk just to blend. If you do not have a sifter, just whisk these together.

Add vanilla, oil and milk. Whisk together. An optional addition: stir as many mini-chocolate chips you you'd like.

Heat a pan on medium-low heat. Add a little butter to the pan and spread it around. This will prevent sticking and add flavor.  This recipe works best with smaller pancakes (3"-3.5" in diameter). A small ~1.5 tablespoon ice-cream scoop portions the perfect amount (see note below on scoops), or I’d recommend a scant 1/4 cup scoop. Scoop batter onto the hot pan. Cook on one side until it starts to bubble slightly on the edges. Check the bottom, if dark enough then flip and finish cooking on remaining side until desired color is reached. Slightly browner pancakes tend to taste a little better. Add a little more butter between batches. Keep a close eye on your heat if subsequent pancakes are darkening too quickly (i.e. before any bubbling begins), lower the heat - this happens often.

We love them with a little maple syrup and blueberries or strawberries. My daughter eats them plain (with chocolate chips in the batter), with fruit on the side. 

A note on ice cream scoops

It is worth investing in a couple high quality stainless steel ice-cream scoops with a scraper in the bowl to help the filling come out with ease. They have so many uses in the kitchen! They are so handy for scooping out perfect amounts of cookie dough, cupcake batter,  pancake portions and even meatballs. You should get a few different sizes to cover all these uses. 

We recommend Piazza scoops. They are really top-notch. They look and function as they did when we first got them years ago. They feel great in your hand and work really well. A bit pricey but worth the investment since you'll use them over and over again for years to come. 

We used the #40 scoop for these pancakes. For reference the scoop is 1 1/2" in width and it holds about 1.5 tablespoons of liquid. You can purchase if from Amazon: Piazza 1/40 Stainless Steel Ice Cream Scoop. But one slightly larger or smaller will work as well.