Healthy Chocolate Oat Pancakes

Healthy chocolate pancakes made with no refined sugars, flours or any processed ingredients. Full of good for you ingredients such as oats, banana, dates and wholewheat flour- delicious and chocolatly pancakes for International Pancake Day!

WOOP WOOP! Guess what day it is tomorrow? PANCAKE DAY or shrove Tuesday of you want to be really accurate (but lets face it Pancake Day sounds 10x more exciting). Shrove Tuesday is actually not just a day to celebrate pancakes because you know pancakes, it marks the last day before 'Lent' which is a time for giving things up (i.e high fat, sugary things) so they would use this day to indulge before the restriction. Well at least with these pancakes you don't have to worry about that, you can eat them during lent and all year round- hello healthy chocolate pancakes of deliciousness. Don't get me wrong I will be making indulgent pancakes on Pancake Day along with these healthy pancakes on the side too...Pancake Day means you can eat them all day right? Not just for breakfast. I first saw the recipe for these pancakes on Foodgawker and I immediately favourited, they are healthy, pancakes and chocolate- what's not to love and oh look at that they contain my favourite ingredient ever- oatsssss

I adapted the recipe from The Foodcrafter quite a bit but I still used healthier alternatives, I didn't have enough chia seeds to make an egg replacement and I didn't have any buckwheat flour. I used an actual egg instead (I think that counts as healthy although next time I will try with chia seeds) and wholewheat flour which is still unprocessed compared to white flour. I wanted this recipe to be ready for tomorrow so you can totally make these, like ASAP. So to test this recipe I obviously had to have a pre-pancake day to make sure they were up to standards...priorities. These are yummay on their own but you can definitely turn them up a notch with maple syrup or you can drizzle this healthy chocolate sauce I made today all over them (recipe up soon)- I also added some blackberry juice made from blackberries picked from my Grandmas garden ^^ For your own blackberry sauce just cook some in a pan or in the microwave on a heat (nothing added), puree them and then sieve to remove the seeds~ easy healthy blackberry sauce! great in smoothies too :)

HEALTHY CHOCOLATE OAT PANCAKES


INGREDIENTS

• 1 banana
• 6 dates
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup porridge oats
• 1/4 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1/4 cup ground almonds
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder (unprocessed)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 180 ml almond milk
• vegetable oil for frying

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Mash the banana either with a fork our in a blender/ food processor. Transfer to a mixing bowl. Then blend the dates until they are broken up and almost form a paste, add to the bowl. 

2. Add the oats, flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, milk, egg and vanilla extract. Stir well.

3. The mixture will be thick and heavy- do not fret! Heat some oil in a pan on medium heat (tip- I get some kitchen roll to spread the oil so its even). Spoon about 2-3 tbsp of the mixture into the pan for each pancake (spread batter evenly with the back of the spoon if necessary).

4.  Turn down the heat down to low so that your pancakes cook low and slow (this is to make sure the mixture is cooked through)- it may be a bit longer but it is so worth it, you can probably cook them on medium heat but make sure they are cooked through.

5. When the edges stiffen up and the pancake forms bubbles on the surface, flip the pancake and cook for a further 3-4 minutes.

6. Serve with fresh fruit, yoghurt, whatever you like!

7. EAT.