Jun. 28, 2021
Cooking In Season
Salad Meals to Beat the Heat
In this recipe round up, I have gathered my best and most delicious summer salad meal recipes in one post, for days when it’s too hot to cook!
September 6, 2010
Moist and Fluffy Kefir Pancakes
Kefir (an effervescent fermented milk drink) is the secret to these ultra fluffy tender pancakes. It also adds a wonderful flavour, along with amazing health benefits.
I have been wanting to for a long while about this recipe, both a delicious family favourite and a sneaky nutritious breakfast: my Awesome Kefir Pancakes.
For those of you who don’t know, kefir is yet another fermented milk product. I know, they are everywhere, but this one is different.
If milk, yogurt, and beer ever had a threesome, kefir would be their love-child. Kefir is more runny than yogurt, more tangy than buttermilk, with a pleasant carbonated fizziness. It’s funky and yeasty, too, because of its fermentation by a special bacteria-yeast symbiosis (actually more beneficial for our health that straight bacteria!).
Kefir may sound odd if you are not used to the idea. But it is a baking rock star. Kefir adds rich flavour (like buttermilk), tenderness (like yogurt), and super fluffiness (like nothing else): because kefir is carbonated, it practically “rises” itself.
Kefir is also lactose-free, which os so helpful for anyone who cannot use (as I do) yogurt and buttermilk to enrich and tenderize everything from muffins, to marinades, to meatloaf. It works just as well, if not a bit better!
Kefir is available at most grocery store, but you can substitue buttermilk in this recipe if you can’t find it.
Moist and Fluffy Kefir Pancakes
Kefir (an effervescent fermented milk drink) is the secret to these moist, flavourful, and fluffy lactose-free pancakes. The recipe is easily doubled to serve more people, or to ensure leftovers for snacks later on.
Ingredients
92 g (2/3 cup) all-purpose flour
48 g whole grain flour (see note, OR use more all-purpose flour)
5 ml (1 tsp) sugar
2.5 ml (1/2 tsp) baking powder
1 ml (1/4 tsp) baking soda
1 ml (1/4 tsp) baking powder
1 large egg
250 ml (1 cup) plain kefir (OR buttermilk, OR plain yogurt thinned with a little milk)
30 ml (2 Tb) melted butter or neutral oil, plus extra for frying the pancakeshe
syrup, fruit, jam, etc, as desired
Note ~ If using buttermilk or yogurt instead of kefir, increase the baking powder to 1 tsp. For the whole grain flour, you can use any you like: whole whole wheat flour, whole spelt flour, whole barley flour, whole oat flour, buckwheat flour, quinoa flour, etc etc
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, the whole wheat flour (or other whole grain flour), the wheat germ, the sugar, the salt, baking powder and baking soda.
- In a separate large bowl, beat the egg. Add the kefir and whisk well. Slowly whisk in the melted butter until evenly blended.
- Add the dry ingredients to the bowl with the wet ingredients and mix well. You can mix the wet and dry ingredients more thoroughly than regular pancake batter because the wheat bran and germ will prevent the batter from getting gluey. The batter will be a bit thicker than regular pancake batter.
- Let the batter sit for at least 5 minutes before cooking (this allows the whole grain flour to absorb liquid).
- Start heating two frying pans over medium-low heat. Get your kids to help set the table and get out jam, syrup, fruit etc for topping the pancakes.
- Put 1 to 2 teaspoons of butter or oil in each frying pan and let melt. Using 2 to 4 tablespoons of batter per pancake, drop or pour batter onto the heated pan. The batter will seem quite thick when you look at it, but it should be aerated with lots of bubbles when you spoon it onto the pan.
- You should fit 3 to 4 pancakes per pan. When bubbles just begin to show on the surface, flip pancakes and cook on the other side for a minute or two (this is a bit earlier than you normally flip pancakes, but it essential to the fluffy end texture). Adjust the heat as you need to prevent the pancakes from burning or undercooking.
- Serve cooked pancakes immediately with maple syrup or any topping desired. Leftover pancakes may be reheated in the toaster, or eaten cold with jam and peanut butter.
…and you didn’t invite me over. I totally deserved pancakes after my (rainy) 18km run this morning!
Totally! well, we have some leftover. You could come get a toaster treat 🙂
Neato! I do a similiar thing for Megan with gluten-free flour and keifer – secret is almond flour, where you have wheat germ, and coconut oil is essential to distract from the chickpea flavour of the flour mix. “if milk, yogurt and beer had a threesome”. Hehehehehe. Well said.
I hereby swear that these pancakes are amazing! I can’t stand the usual doughy, mushy, stodgy consistency of pancakes, and always make crêpes instead, but the kefir pancakes are like a cross between a crêpe and a crumpet, and not stodgy at all. SO good!
Glad you liked my wee description, Chris.
And I’m so glad that Laura, my helper extraordinaire, loved my pancakes! Another day, another convert 😉
I’ve calculated the nutritional information on a free calorie counter website that I use. Would you mind if I submitted the entire recipe with crediting your name to it? The recipe section isn’t live yet, but once it is I believe people will be able to browse for recipe ideas. There’s no charge to anyone using the website so nobody would profit from the information being submitted.
I just made these for my family for the 2nd time this morning and we love them. I make my own kefir and this is a great way to use it when we start getting extra in the fridge.
sure, no problem!