The Perfect Pancake

I have never been a fan of baking mix pancakes.  Although I know plenty of people who swear by Bisquick, and the favorite here in Alaska seems to be Krusteaz, I have always been a pancakes-from-scratch kind of girl.

Sometime after I graduated from college and embarked on the adventure of living sans parents, I started making pancakes from scratch.  I began with a standard recipe from The Joy of Cooking, and perfected it over the years until I had a formula I knew by heart. 

There was a time when I would regularly make a double batch of these perfect pancakes on Sunday, freeze the leftovers, then pop them in the toaster on weekday mornings for a toasty breakfast treat on the way to the office. They were so good, I even recall my mother asking me to make my special pancakes when I was visiting her and my stepfather.

Needless to say, when I learned I couldn't eat gluten, I began a quest for the perfect gluten-free pancake recipe. Well, more accurately, the perfect gluten-free, egg-free, butter-free, milk-free pancake recipe.  And, so far, I have not found it.  (Although I do have a great recipe that I am slowly perfecting, and I will share that with you...soon).

In the meantime, I have found an amazing gluten-free pancake and baking mix that could possibly be better than any made-from-scratch recipe I develop.  So, I wanted to share it with you.  Here it is:

It's called Organic Buckwheat Flax Pancake and Baking Mix and it's from The Pure Pantry.


I discovered this little gem at Natural Pantry in Anchorage, where there is always some new product that looks delicious and intriguing.  Normally, I would bypass any gluten-free mix, but this one spoke to me for some reason, and when I read the ingredients I was surprised to find it free of not only gluten, but also the other major offenders -- soy, dairy, and eggs!  And, for those of you concerned about nuts, it is also nut free!  Yippee!


Anyway, I took it home and followed the directions for 8-10 pancakes.  Only, because I was out of egg-replacer, I tried a little experiment.  I used chia seeds in place of eggs.  I also left out the sweetener.  That's right, I did not add the agave nectar, or any other sweetener for that matter.  And, boy oh boy was the result good!  

I have made these pancakes three more times since that first experiment, and because I loved the chia seed results so well, I have yet to use egg replacer.  I'm telling you, chia seeds soaked in a little warm water are excellent egg replacers (at least for this recipe), and so good for you too!


Here is a terrible photo I took of these delicious pancakes with my iPhone a few weekends ago.  We had an overnight guest, so I'd bought organic blueberries, strawberries, and watermelon, and I also whipped up some rhubarb syrup.  So, here is the finished product with all the fruit and syrup goodness on top.  Yum!

Do you have a favorite gluten-free pancake mix?  Or, how about a from-scratch recipe?  I'm trying to reduce my daily sugar intake (soooo hard to do), so eliminating sweetener from recipes that don't really need it is one approach I'm trying.  I don't really like my pancakes sweet anyway because I ad syrup and fruit, and I'd rather taste the sweetness there.  What about you? Do you like your pancakes unsweetened like I do? 

Comfort Food

One of my favorite snacks used to be something my family calls a "cheese crisp." Spread a thin layer of grated cheese on a large flour tortilla and stick it under your oven's broiler until the tortilla starts to brown and the cheese melts and begins to bubble. (A "Mexican" cheese mix such as monterey jack works well and tastes the best, although we also used cheddar or manchego or whatever other soft cheese we had on hand.) For me, this crispy, cheesy treat has always been the ultimate comfort food.

But, after learning that gluten and casein were making me sick, I figured the cheese crisp was just one of many things that I'd have fond memories of but never eat again.

Then, I discovered Food for Life Brown Rice Tortillas, and invented a kind of comfort food substitute. At the end of a long stressful day, if I was craving carbs, I'd warm up a rice tortilla in the toaster oven -- just until it was warm and soft -- and drizzle it with olive oil. Mmmmm.

Sometimes I'd substitute ghee for the olive oil. And, sometimes, I'd get really crazy and do half flax oil and half olive oil. Maybe not the most nutritious snack, but it sure was delicious.

I love the brown rice tortillas, and even though they don't have the same soft texture as a flour or even a corn tortilla, I really don't miss those. Still, the tortilla was never quite the same without cheese.

After trying several different cheese substitutes, I'd pretty much given up on ever finding anything that I could eat. So many of them contain casein or soy. And the one brand I know about that is soy and casein free contains yeast, which I had always had a strong reaction to -- in any form.

But, now that the yeast levels in my gut are under control and it appears that I am less reactive to a lot of foods (such as carrots and mushrooms), I decided to give Daiya cheese another try. This is a brand of vegan cheese that comes in cheddar, mozzarella, and jalapeno jack varieties. It melts really well, and contains no soy or casein, although it does contain inactive yeast, presumably for flavor.

Here is the result of my first cheese crisp in about 6 years! This is the mozarella variety of cheese, which is excellent in lasagna. The cheddar is actually much better for making cheese crisps. But, as when I was a child, when you want your comfort food, you use whatever you'd got on hand.

What are your favorite comfort foods, and have you found ways to recreate them using substitute ingredients? Have you tried Daiya cheese and do you like it?