Confetti Pancakes

So, you’ve read the first two posts (hopefully) and you’re either already head-long into whole foods eating or you desire to be. Here’s a little incentive to get started.

Our meal last night was “Confetti Pancakes.” Fun name, not so fun ingredients. I was fairly pleased with the reaction of my most astute taste testers. Well, okay. Here’s the real story.

I wanted to make these pancakes for dinner. As I read through the recipe, I could just visualize the healthy ingredients coursing through our veins, giving the young ones what the need to grow and lessening the evidence of aging in the older ones. Yes!

We usually hear cries of excitement when breakfast becomes dinner. “Alright!” My youngest whines that she doesn’t get to help make dinner as much as her older sister, so I enlisted her help.

“Okay, Mom!” She was in. Well, when she saw the carrots I was chopping, she started to protest. The “confetti’ part of the pancakes was not sprinkles. “Boo.”

“Mom. You can’t put carrots in pancakes. Yuck!” Nothing I could do would stop her outburst. Rat-fink. Traitor! Now everyone knew there were carrots in the pancakes (well, now her sister knew). Some confetti! Did I really believe no one would notice their bright orange color? An argument ensued.

“Nelia, you can’t be my helper if you spoil the chef’s secret.” I desperately tried to engage her again in this very special endeavor.

“Nelia, this is a secret ingredient. No one can know,” I whispered.

You get the picture. She left the kitchen for a minute and then came back, engaged in the mission.

She watched as I measured the zucchini. “Mom, is this sprinkles?” she said loudly, in the direction of the dining room table where Lourdes was doing her homework. Wink. Wink. My partner in crime was back.

Nelia loves to cook pancakes and is quite good at it for an 8-year-old. We whipped up our mad genius creation. Full disclosure: if you haven’t looked at the recipe yet, there is carrot, zucchini, AND kale (or collard greens) in the recipe. Yowzer! I have no shame in confessing that I allowed Nelia to put one or two chocolate chips on top of the pancakes. This is a small concession, in my opinion, to get them to try new things.

If you look oh-so-closely, you can see specks of green and orange on the sides.

So, what happened when we served them? Well, my husband and I were delighted. They were delicious. We ate… That’s not really what you want to know, is it? Nelia ate two pancakes and Lourdes painstakingly ate one. I prefer to believe that they tasted good to my daughters; the orange and green colors were just too foreign; it threw them off. Next time, I might try making them with just zucchini, because you can obliterate it in the food processor and not really notice it. I couldn’t see any zucchini in the pancakes, just kale and carrot.

I think it helped that Nelia got to help make them and be in on the secret. You have to get creative and I’m not above sinking to low levels to get kids to eat healthy. By now, our kids are used to having to try new things, but next time even I might put zucchini in one half of the pancake mix for the girls and all the good stuff in the other for me and my husband. I do take pity on them once in awhile. Or, maybe I can figure out how to chop the kale and carrot oh-so-tiny as to not notice it. I can always try!

Let me know if you try the recipe and how your kids react. I’d love to know!

Confetti Pancakes
Makes enough pancakes for a family of 4

2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups unsweetened almond milk
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sweetener (agave nectar, sugar, etc.)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup shredded zucchini
1/4 cup finely diced collard greens
1/4 cup shredded carrot
Optional: add 3 dark chocolate chips to each pancake
(“Chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, anyone?!”) 

Mix all ingredients together, and add more almond milk as needed for thinner pancakes. Cook in a large skillet with a touch of oil. Add fruit sauce, maple syrup, agave, or nothing at all. YUM.

 (I added a little over 2 cups of almond milk, and next time I will add more. They came out pretty thick, more like corn cakes. I bet, the deception could have gone further if the pancakes had been thinner.)

Recipe taken from 21-Day Vegan kickstart