Did Someone Say Brunch?

The year before my family emigrated from the UK to New Zealand, we spent a summer over here staying with my mum's cousins.  Our first ever Kiwi Christmas, we were served up pikelets for breakfast.  New to summer Christmas customs, I remember Mum asking if a pancake breakfast was tradition and my 'aunty' Audrey saying, "It is now!".  Fast forward sixteen years and pancakes and pikelets have become synonymous with special occassions.  Every birthday, long weekend and Christmas morning we have a spread of pancakes, pikelets or waffles, hot berries, fresh Greek yoghurt  or cream and golden syrup.  Consequently, I love pancakes!  Not just for what they represent, but for the endless topping possibilities and my uncanny ability to eat my weight in them without getting full.

Mum's pancakes were thin crepes, designed to make a couple of eggs and a cup of flour feed a family of five, and perfect for filling with chocolate chips, rolling up and dipping in yoghurt!  There is no recipe in the world that can replicate the fun of sharing a table with family, eating pancakes with sticky fingers on a holiday weekend, but that doesn't mean there's no place at all for pancakes on a normal day.

Obviously a breakfast like this is a "sometimes food" but I wanted to combine my new healthier outlook with the deliciousness of pancakes so that's it's something I could eat whenever a pancake craving hit without feeling like I had to make up for it later.  With my job, I have a couple of late starts/late finishes during the week so I like sitting down for a decent brunch to fuel a long day and these are perfect. The recipe is almost a cross between a hotcake and a banana fritter.  The sweetness from the bananas and the moisture from the coconut mean you don't have to add any syrup, and there's plenty of protein from the egg and oats to keep up your energy levels.  They make a nice sit down breakfast with fruit salad and yoghurt but would keep for a day or two in the fridge if you wanted something to grab on the way out the door.

Banana Oat Pancakes

serves two, or one hungry person

1 ripe banana

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/4 cup quick-cook oats

1/4 cup wholemeal flour

1/4 cup shredded coconut

a little milk to thin the mixture

Mash the banana in a bowl until there are no lumps.

Add the egg and mix with a fork.

Add the dry ingredients and mix until combined.

The batter should slide off a spoon, if the mixture is a little too thick (i.e. if your banana wasn't quite ripe enough or your egg was very small) you a tablespoon or two of milk to thin it out.

Spoon the mixture onto a hot non-stick pan and cook til browned on either side.  

Serve with fresh fruit and yoghurt. :)