It’s Friday! Yay! A weekend brings a whole lot of liveliness which probably the weekdays fail to get. Not because I have a super hectic week and I want to relax during the two days off on weekend. But partly because however stressful the week might be, there’s always an anticipation of cooking something new, styling more and yes, of course, photographing more. I am always excited about these two days because I get time to splurge into food styling and photography which I have been enjoying on almost every weekend from past 4-5 years. This excitement brings in a lot more vivacity into my routine life and fuels me enough to get going through the entire week. And the other reason is the indulgent breakfast which I get to eat on weekends. On weekdays, I care less about breakfast and generally end up eating muesli with milk or yogurt with a generous helping of fresh seasonal fruits. But on weekends, I try on other options, sometimes freshly baked muffins, baked eggs or even pancakes. And out of all, without a doubt, pancakes are my favorite of all. Last long weekend I cooked this chocolate & maple caramelized banana whole wheat pancakes, which were super yum! And of course, we can call them to be healthy as well, all because of the good things which went into these pancakes – the whole wheat flour, eggs, greek yogurt, dark chocolate, coconut cream, bananas, walnuts and maple syrup. Did I say chocolate healthy? Yeah! a little bit of good dark chocolate with 80-90% cocoa solids is what I used for the chocolate sauce. And believe me, every one of us deserves a little bit of chocolate after a super hectic week. And yes, of course, this kind of delicious and healthy treat of pancakes too!
- 120 gm whole wheat flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tbsp caster sugar
- 2 eggs, yolks and white separated
- 250 ml buttermilk
- butter, for frying
- greek yogurt, to serve
- chopped walnut, to serve
- 4 ripe and firm bananas, sliced
- 1/4 cup pure maple syrup
- 75 gm dark chocolate (80-90% cocoa solids), chopped
- 75 ml coconut cream
- To make chocolate sauce, heat the coconut cream in microwave, until it starts to boil. Add the chopped dark chocolate to cream and let it sit for 5 minutes, until it melts. Mix the melted chocolate thoroughly into the cream to make sauce of pouring consistency.
- To make maple caramelized bananas, in a shallow pan, heat the maple syrup until it starts bubbling. Add the sliced bananas and let cook on medium for 2 minutes. Flip the bananas and let cook on other side for another 2 minutes. Let cool.
- To make pancakes, mix flour, baking powder, sugar and a pinch of salt in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre and add egg yolks and butter milk and mix well.
- In another bowl, whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form. Fold the egg whites into the batter gently and thoroughly.
- Heat a large flat pan and grease with butter. Pour about 1/4 cup of batter onto heated pan and let cook for 2-3 minutes, until bubble start appearing on top. Flip the pancake and cook well on other side too, for another 2-3 minutes. Repeat and cook rest of the batter.
- To serve, stack pancakes, alternating them with greek yogurt and caramelized bananas. Pour over the chocolate sauce and sprinkle with chopped walnuts. Serve warm.