Egg-Free Pancakes

I know that this will be hard to believe, but we ran out of eggs this week.

Not only did we run out of eggs, but I didn't run out to the grocery store as soon as it happened.

Weird.

It even snowed, and we still didn't run out to buy eggs! (Why is it that as soon as the forecast calls for snow, the entire world needs milk, eggs and bread??)

The egg-less state of our refrigerator didn't cause any real problems... until today. Because you need a big, fancy breakfast at least once over the weekend, right? Usually, in our house, that means eggs and some kind of breakfast meat, or maybe French toast or pancakes or waffles... each of which, as far as my experience has shown, requires at least one egg.

Rather than turning to cereal, I turned to Google, and found this - a recipe for egg-free pancakes with rave reviews from those who had tried it. Woo hoo! We can still have a very weekend-y breakfast!

The recipe is actually very easy.

In one bowl, mix together the dry ingredients - flour, sugar, a bit of salt, and a bunch of baking powder.

In another bowl, mix together the wet ingredients - milk, vegetable oil, melted butter and, of all things, orange juice. Which, by the way, I was also out of (what the heck was up in my house this week???), so I substituted with cranberry-pomegranate juice.


Which is why you can see traces of purple in the bowl.

The resulting batter is pretty much like normal pancake batter, just a little thinner (though it was a little lumpier than my usual pancake batter... and it did thicken a bit as it stood...)


Because the batter was a little thin, I decided to use my little pan and make the pancakes one at a time, rather than the big one I'd planned to use, as I thought that if I made multiple pancakes at a time, they'd spread into each other and become a bit sloppy looking.

These actually cooked up really well. Something about the reaction between the baking powder and the juice allows them to be fluffy and light and hold together really well, even without any egg.

I decided to make half of our pancakes with blueberries.

And I topped them off with a yummy drizzle of maple syrup.

And then it was time to see if they'd pass the kid test.

First up, little miss.


She loved them. Gave them two thumbs up.

Next, little man.

He'd have given them a thumbs up if he could have stopped shoving pancake pieces in his mouth. You know he likes it when more ends up in his mouth than in his high chair seat. Or on the floor.

And, in case you are curious, daddy and I liked them too. We may just make them again, even when we have eggs.

Which, by the way, we finally went and bought.

Egg-Free Pancakes

(from Art Of Dessert)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups milk

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup orange juice (I substituted cranberry-pomegranate juice and it worked beautifully)

1/4 cup melted butter

In a medium sized bowl, sift (or whisk) together the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, oil and juice. Slowly add in the melted butter, then mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir together until incorporated.

Note that this batter tends to bubble up and then thicken due to the baking powder. You can gently stir it to break down some of the bubbles, which will also thin it out again for you, if you need to.)

Pour 1/3 - 1/2 cup of batter onto a hot griddle or non-stick pan. Cook each pancake until you see a few bubbles rise to the surface and the edges begin to dry, then flip them over to cook the other side until it is lightly browned.

I added a few blueberries to some as they cooked on the first side. Little miss suggested chocolate chips, which you could try, too.

Enjoy!

Note - the Art of Dessert blog is written by a woman who has children with a variety of food allergies, and the recipes on her site always indicate which allergens are contained in each recipe. She also has great recipes that exclude specific allergens. If you have food allergies, know someone with food allergies, or cook for someone with food allergies, I recommend checking out her blog.