Hi, I'm Earl. Product Manager at Oatmeal Raisin Pancakes
Pancakes often invoke heart-warming childhood memories of Saturday mornings when the sweet, milky scent of pancakes would waft through the entire house, lingering throughout the day until dinnertime. Unfortunately, homemade pancakes seem to recede into the annals of the mind like other childhood memories. In addition, many people choose not to eat pancakes because they are not as healthy as cereal, oatmeal and other whole-wheat toast.
However, there is hope for pancakes. Pancakes can also be adapted for a healthy lifestyle by replacing refined white flour with whole-wheat flour and oat flour. Furthermore, pancake recipes can incorporate other healthy ingredients such as nuts and raisins. The following recipe is adapted from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce and Smittenkitchen.com.
These oatmeal pancakes have a heavenly spongey inside and a thin, crisp crust. The raisins and the oatmeal cause the pancake to have a more robust and textured feel than regular pancakes have. The oatmeal pancake also melts in the mouth into an oatmeal-like conglomerate, making it soft and comforting to eat.
Oatmeal pancakes require most of the traditional pancake ingredients including: milk, eggs, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter. Some other uncommon ingredients are honey, raisins, rolled oats and whole-wheat flour.
Raw rolled oats would not make the best pancakes, so before using the oats, cook a cup of rolled oats in two cups of water by simmering the two in a pot for about five to ten minutes. When ready, the oatmeal should look gooey, and there should not be any clear liquid. Another cup of oats must be ground into a fine powder by a food processor. However, do not grind the oats down too much; there should still be some quarter-sized pieces of oats in the end.
Once the oats are prepared, mix the dry ground oats with one cup of flour, one-fourth cup of raisins, two tablespoons of brown sugar, two teaspoons of baking soda and three-fourth tablespoon of coarse salt in a large bowl.
In a separate bowl, mix the softened butter, two-percent milk, cooked oatmeal, eggs and honey together.
Once the two separate bowls are thoroughly mixed, slowly pour the bowl of wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients while gently stirring the bowl of dry ingredients.
At this point, the batter can be stored in the refrigerator for later use.
Heat a cast-iron pan over medium-low heat. Once the pan is hot—water should quickly evaporate upon contact with the pan—lightly butter the pan and pour one-third cup of the batter onto the pan.
Let the batter develop a nice, crisp crust by allowing it to cook on one side for approximately two minutes. Flip the batter over after two minutes. Right before flipping, check to make sure that the batter on top holds together well. The batter may splatter from the edges a bit after being flipped and hitting the pan.
Wait another minute or two for the second side to cook. Remove the pancake from the pan and serve with some honey and fruits! To cook the rest of the batter, repeat the process starting from adding the butter to the pan.
