Heather'S Healthy Pancakes | Fuel Your Triathlon Training

– If you’re like me you’ll see pancakes as a treat, and that’s probably just because I don’t have them very often. But they needn’t be, because they’re incredibly simple to make and with the right ingredients they can be very nutritious. So whether you use them to fuel a bike ride, or for your second breakfast after a swim. I’ll take you through my step-by-step pancake recipe.

(whooshing) (buzzing) – Okay on to what we need, first of all equipment you see I’ve got a food processor. Which just makes things a little bit easier, but isn’t actually necessary. You do however need a jug, and a whisk or a fork for beating your eggs, you’ll also need a board to be able to mash your bananas on. Frying pan for cooking your pancakes, and a fish slice or a spatula for flipping them.

Unless your a real dab hand at flipping, and there’s grease free paper to put between your pancakes whilst you’re waiting for the rest to cook. And now on to the important part the ingredients. So you can see it’s all pretty much laid out here. But for this pancake recipe I’m going to be using two bananas, again you want nice ripe bananas not only easier for mashing but that bit sweeter as well.

With two eggs, then chia seeds soaked in a bit of water. Which you will see here, I’ll talk more about them, but it’s made gloopy mixture already. Then we’re going to be using some milk. I’ve actually got almond milk today, but whatever you want.

Some maca powder, oats which are gonna be ground into oatmeal shortly, a bit of coconut oil for cooking your pancakes. And then we’ve got some stuff for decoration on top. With some yoghourt, some honey, and some fruit. Well feel free to take a screenshot now so you’ve got all the ingredients if you want to come back it later.

Alright today, I have got oats. I’m gonna use two tablespoons. If you have oatmeal or ground up oats basically then you’re good to go, but as I have whole oats. I’m just gonna pop two tablespoons worth into the food processor.

I’m gonna be blending them into more of a oatmeal type texture to bulk out my pancakes. (food processor whirs) Okay once the oats are nice and ground, just leave them there to one side for a moment. Now I’m going to mash my bananas. I guess you could actually could put them in whole, but I’m used to doing this without a food processor.

So just give them a good bit of a mash first. That’s the great thing about this recipe, you can actually do it without a food processor if you don’t have one to hand. It’s certainly when you want ripe bananas. Otherwise you end up bending your fork.

Spoon that into the mixture. (metal spoon scraping) (banging) (metal spoon scraping) (banging) Now the eggs, okay this isn’t my best skill so don’t watch me too closely. Yes, no shell first go. (egg shells cracking) Let’s see, the second time lucky that’s good.

Okay, it obviously doesn’t matter if I have a bit of contamination, don’t want to waste the banana. It’s all going in the same direction anyway. Give the eggs a quick beating. (sloshing) Okay and add them to your pancake mix.

(metal fork scraping) This is literally everything goes in one pot all together. So next I’m gonna go with the milk. I’m doing 200 mils of milk, which I can just about see on this jug. (calm jazz music) But like I say I’ve used almond milk today, but can use any milk that you prefer.

Next, uh right this one chia seeds. I’ve mentioned these, you can see they’re a little gloopy. And I actually soaked them in a bit of water. Only sort of five, ten minutes ago, and they’ve already absorbed that much.

If you don’t eat eggs, or your a vegan, then chia seeds are a great alternative. I’m adding them in as well, but they really help to bind the pancakes as well as giving it great nutritional benefit. Really high in protein and lots of vitamins. So I’m gonna add those, that was two table spoons of chia seeds soaked in water, just enough to sort of cover them.

(banging) And then this little magic ingredient, maca powder. That’s a root, from a root I think from South America, but it’s full of all sorts of great properties. High in iron, zinc, calcium, so you don’t need very much of it. And it’s not cheap but it does have quite a distinct flavour.

So before you add it to your pancakes make sure you like it, because you don’t want to ruin your pancakes. Alright I’m gonna add in a tablespoon of maca powder, because I do enjoy it as well as appreciate, oh and a bit extra, the properties you get from this. Alright, now time to whiz it all up, you gonna find out what consistency it comes to, and the chia seeds will change things as well so let’s have a look. (food processor whirring) Okay, all that looks pretty perfect pancake consistency.

So if you can see here, it’s kind of runs off the spoon, but it’s still gloopy enough so it will hold when it comes to the cooking. And that leads us on to the cooking, time to heat the frying pan. I’m actually gonna use coconut oil, but you can use any type of oil that you prefer. Also you don’t want your pancakes sticking.

So be really generous and we’ll make quite a lot of pancakes here so you can always add in more oil as you go. But I need to go and get this melting. Okay so take a sort of tablespoon full and dollop it into your frying pan once the oil is already warm, and you can probably fit one or two in your pan. Just make sure that they don’t touch because they do spread a little bit.

And then you’ve got to be patient. You don’t want to cook them too fast, because they will burn on the bottom and you’ll find it’s still gooey in the middle. Wait until, just seem firm enough, so you can have a little bit of a poke with your spatula. Just to see if they are ready to flip.

It is harder once it’s over to work out, but if you just give it a little bit of a tap with your spatula on top once you’ve turned it. You’ll start to be able to tell the texture, and see if they’re ready to take off. (calm jazz music) Well as you can see that mixture it does make quite a lot of pancakes. And if you are wanting to make it all at once, I’d suggest a piece of grease proof paper between each pancake and then keeping them in the oven so they can stay warm.

But I got bored of that, and I think I’m ready to eat. So I’ve set four aside, and this is my serving suggestion, but obviously whatever you fancy. I am gonna add a nice dollop of Greek yoghourt. Just to add a little extra protein, and some calcium there, and then some blueberries.

Now another alternative actually, instead of just putting blueberries on top. You can even pop the blueberries into the pancake mix. Obviously once you’ve finished blitzing, otherwise you’re just gonna end up with blue pancakes. Um but it’s quite nice to have them, so their nice and warm from cooking.

Raspberries come afterwards like I’m doing today. And if you do have a sweet tooth like me, you can add a little drizzle of honey, maple syrup, date syrup whatever it is you fancy. But like I said this recipe was going to be simple, the main ingredients being egg and bananas. But if you’re not a fan of either then you can substitute, I’ve already added in chia seeds, but you could actually use a few more.

You will need more moisture as a result, because they absorb a lot, and then you can take out the eggs. And the same goes with banana, you can add in some other fruit but just make sure you play around with the consistency. And whatever you like basically, and they are a great recovery snack. Or you can even use them as a bit of a pre-fuel.

Certainly what I’m gonna do after this. I do need to go for a run I think, but enough of me talking it’s time for me to eat my pancakes. If you’ve enjoyed this, hit the thumb up, like button. Subscribe by hitting the globe to make sure you get all of our videos.

And if you want to know more about super foods specifically for triathlon I made a video on that. You can find just down here.

Source: Global Triathlon Network