Flourless Flax Seed Pancakes

My buddy Mary did it again!  Mary emailed me a link to a recipe she found on Recipezaar for Flourless Flax Seed Pancakes, very intriguing as they are naturally gluten-free and super healthy (with the heavy cream substitution of course)!

So, in order to make these, I needed a few ingredients.  The recipe calls for heavy cream and Mary needed a dairy-free version of that for her family.  After experimenting at home last week, trying to make a homemade version of heavy cream out of rice milk (which is what Luke drinks) and Earth Balance.  I quickly realized that was NOT going to work, so I went looking for something else that would be suitable.  Since the heavy cream in the recipe wasn’t going to be whipped, I thought, “why do I need heavy cream anyway?”  Wouldn’t that just pretty much cancel out the healthy attributes of the flax seed pancakes?

So, I bought some So Delicious Original Coconut Milk Creamer (very good by the way).  I could barely detect the flavor of coconut, which is a good thing for me.  I can only take so much coconut flavor, and even then, it is usually accompanied with chocolate and caramel (I am referring specifically to the vintage Girl Scouts “Caramel deLites” cookies of my Brownie days back in the early 80’s. What are they called now? “Samoas?” Seeing that I have not been able to buy or eat them in 5 years, I am a bit out of the loop!).

Next up, the recipe calls for protein powder.  I go through phases with protein powder and I have been out of it for quite some time now.  The last time I was using protein powder was when Luke was about 14 months old, and he was drinking hemp milk (long story).  I was impressed with what I learned about hemp, so I started to use it too, by putting hemp protein powder in my smoothies. So I thought I would use hemp protein powder by Living Harvest (Vanilla Spice) in the pancakes.

After the recipe I will go into these products a little bit more.

Flourless Flax Seed Pancakes

1/8 cup Whole Flax Seed or 1/4 cup Ground Flax Seed (If you buy the whole flax seed, you will need to grind it in a coffee grinder first. If you buy the ground flax seed, (which is what I used), just be sure to store it in an airtight container in the freezer).

1/4 cup Protein Powder, any flavor (I used Vanilla Spice Hemp Protein Powder)

3 Eggs (I am sure Egg Replacer would work fine as a substitute)

2 tsp. Baking Powder

1/4 cup Overflowing Heavy Cream (I used So Delicious Original Coconut Milk Creamer, which saves on a ton of bad fat!)

1 dash Vanilla (I used 1/8 tsp. Vanilla)

1 pinch Salt (I literally did a pinch)

1/2 tsp. Sugar Substitute (I used 1 tsp. Agave Nectar)

• Grind the flax seeds in a coffee grinder, making approximately 1/4 cup of meal.

• Add baking powder, protein powder, salt and sweetener to the flax meal.

• In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with the vanilla and the heavy cream (or creamer). Pour into the meal mixture and blend thoroughly with a fork or whisk.

• Heat griddle to medium heat; melt butter or coconut oil (I used Spectrum shortening, which is non-hydrogenated), and drop batter by 1/4 cups full.

• Turn when bubbles appear on the surface of the pancake, cooking for just a minute more.  Serve with your favorite syrup.

Absolutely DELICIOUS! Sam and Luke ate 3 each and could not tell they were any different from our standard GF pancakes using Pamela's Baking & Pancake mix. This mom is feeling s.m.a.r.t.