Christmas – a time for putting on weight and being really proud of it. “It’s Christmas, I can eat five boxes of chocolate for breakfast!” “It’s Christmas, I can definitely manage to eat fourteen turkeys – they’re tiny.”
Maybe not. Here’s a (slightly) healthier option for you to try for your breakfast!
What You’ll Need
Porridge oats (porridge is my mortal enemy – I HATE it – so I had to make a special trip to Tesco to pick these up)
Eggs (1 or 2, depending on how many pancakes you want to make)
Bananas (again, 1 or 2 depending on how many you want to make)
Cinnamon powder
Peanut butter (optional)
Dark chocolate chips (optional again, but delicious)
It’s best to use a blender (or food processor, whatever you’d like to call it) to create a sort of flour consistency with your porridge oats – this makes a smoother and altogether nicer mixture. I popped two cups of oats into the blender and waited until it looked just like flour.
Bear in mind, I made two giant pancakes (my sister and I were home alone and feeling peckish), but it’s just as fun to make lots of mini ones if you’re hosting a brunch or something fabulously grown-up.
Now add your banana. It seems a bit weird to put banana and cinnamon together, but trust me, it mushes everything together much better than just egg, and of course adds in some of your 5-a-day. I cut my bananas up into little chunks and smushed (technical term) them into the oat mixture with the back of a fork.
Side note: this oat and banana mixture actually tastes amazing, and would be nice on its own mixed with some plain yoghurt or something.
Whisk your eggs (use 2 if you want to make double the mixture), mix it in with the banana and oats, and add as much cinnamon as you’d like. I LOVE cinnamon, so I put a lot in. So much, in fact, that I basically choked to death while I was mixing it in. All the fun of Christmas, people.
Once you’ve got a sort of “cake mix” type consistency, it’s time to pop it in a frying pan. I melted a little stick of butter in the pan before I poured the mixture in. If you want to make mini ones, do two or three at a time (and just drop a blob of mixture where you want each pancake to cook).
Sprinkle your chocolate chips on top of the mixture once it’s cooked through a little (maybe wait a minute or so). I’m laughing my head off as I type this, because this picture looks so dainty and cute with my little sprinkle of chocolate chips – once I’d taken this picture I added about 9 million more on top!
Once you can slide a spatula (or a fish slice, as I’m using – because nobody in my family eats fish, it’s become my pancake flipping utensil) underneath the pancake, you can try flipping it over to cook the other side.
Done! These are super delicious with chopped up fruit, yoghurt or cream. The cinnamon adds a lovely festive touch, and you could experiment with ingredients – why not try some orange peel? Enjoy!