Banana and Pineapple Pancakes

I decided to write this very early this morning as I have a big day ahead of me and I wanted to post this recipe. I am meeting up with one of my best friends from high school, and I haven't seen her in over six months, so I'm pretty excited.

Being home has been great. Especially since the high school kids are now on holidays, which means I get to see my brother and one of my best friends.

It's hard to explain this, but when I was a kid I didn't have many friends. Throughout primary school I had about three constant friends. In high school, it wasn't until Year 11 did I make a great group of friends. Well, my neighbours, who I have mentioned before, were two of those three constant friends. Will is my age, Annie is my brothers age (two years younger), and the four of us did pretty much everything together when we were younger. Sure, we fought like crazy, but we also had great fun.

I remember we used to play Bionicle games with my brother, and in return he would play mermaid games with us in the pool. We had a really epic game of mermaids once, where Will was the bad guy and Shaun was the prince. We also frequently played Harry Potter, in which I was the eldest sibling, Shaun was the middle child and Annie was the youngest. I always fell in love with Draco Malfoy when we went to Hogwarts. We also pretended we were in a movie, and played Hilary Duff loudly and pretended we were in the opening credits scene.

Being back home I've had a chance to catch up with Shaun, Annie and Will. It's been great, because while these days the boys play computer games and Annie and I go for long walks, it's just a great reminder of being young.

We also spend our time mocking bad movies. Last night we spent a very long hour and a half watching a pretty terrible movie and having the best time doing so. I don't know a lot of people who would do this, so it's great to have friends who love to do this with me.

Now, these pancakes kind of remind me of our childhood. Annie and I used to force the boys to have picnics with us, and pikelets or pancakes were usually on the menu. These definitely weren't the pancakes we could make back them - hell, back then, you couldn't make me step in a kitchen.

If you don't like pineapple, there is no need to leave it out of this recipe. My brother, who doesn't like pineapple, liked these. You can't really taste it - the pineapple more or less does the job that sugar would usually do. If you add some of the juice with the pineapple chunks, the pancakes will be sweet without the need to add sugar. The amount of fruit in these is a lot, but I swear the fruit does the job the sugar would do - these pancakes are light, sweet and fruity. Served warm with maple or golden syrup, and you have a definite winner.

Level of Difficulty: Easy – you only really need one bowl and a frypan.

Average Cost: $ - unless of course bananas near you are expensive. Every other ingredient is pretty common.  

Menu Options: You can definitely omit the pineapple if you want to, but maybe add more honey if you like sweet pancakes. You can also change the fruit around depending on what you want to eat. Like usual, this recipe is pretty basic and you can do what you like with it. These pancakes can also be frozen or placed in the fridge for future use. You should cover each pancake with foil or wrap and place in a plastic bag if freezing. To reheat, place them in the oven for a few minutes to warm up. Note that the calorie count is without the serving syrup.

Adapted from: 100 Days of Real Food

Makes 12 medium-sized pancakes.

What you need:

-          1 ½ cups whole-wheat flour

-          2 tsp baking powder

-          1 ½ tsp baking soda

-          1 tsp salt

-          2 tbsp honey

-          2 eggs

-          1 ¾ cups milk

-          2 tbsp butter

-          3 bananas

-          ½ cup pineapple chunks – I would use canned pineapple chunks in juice, rather than a fresh pineapple. This is because you want to include some pineapple juice with the chunks to sweeten the batter.

-          4-6 tbsp butter for frying

-          Maple or Golden Syrup, to serve

What to do:

In a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients – remembering to sift all of the ingredients together.

Add the wet ingredients, and whisk together well. Prior to adding the eggs, make sure you beat them separately in a small bowl. Make sure there are no streaks of honey or egg in the mixture. It should be a thick mixture.

Mash the bananas in a small bowl and add, with the pineapple chunks, to the batter. Mix thoroughly, so the mixture is yellow in colour, and thick and chunky. Taste the batter – if not sweet enough, add more honey or pineapple juice.

Heat a frypan over medium heat. Add approximately 2 tablespoons of the frying butter – this depends on how big the frypan is, and how many pancakes you intend to make at once. The frypan I used was massive and I could easily make four pancakes at once.

Add the batter to the frypan. I used a ladle to figure out how much batter I wanted per pancake. But 2-4 heaped tablespoons would make a pancake approximately the size of mine. This will mean you should get around 12 pancakes from the batter (more or less depending on the size of your pancakes).

When the batter begins to bubble – the entire surface of the pancake is bubbling – flip the pancakes gently. The second side will take less time to cook as the pancakes should be mostly cooked through when you flip them. When each side of the pancake is golden brown, they are cooked.

Serve warm with maple or golden syrup. I have mine with fresh berries, greek yoghurt and golden syrup.