My Recipes | Future Expat

Easy Healthy Recipe: Baked Whole Wheat Pancake Squares

Mar 16, 2013 | Breakfast, My Recipes | 0 comments

I love breakfast. In my quest to eat less processed foods with ingredients I can’t pronounce, I’ve discovered that pancakes are one of the easiest things to make from scratch, eliminating processed pancake mix.

I have found a dozen recipes that I think are all great. Some use oatmeal, some add bananas and blueberries, and one even uses cottage cheese.

So when I stumbled on this recipe for Pancake Squares, I knew I had to try them.

I rarely make recipes without tweaking them at least a little, and this time was no exception.

I’ve been trying to eat more whole wheat and a few months ago bought some King Arthur whole wheat white flour. It is lighter than regular whole wheat flour so you can use it in recipes you normally wouldn’t use wheat flour. In these recipes, you substitute half of the white flour with the whole wheat white. That’s what I decided to do with this recipe, and it turned out great…no one would know you snuck in the healthier flour unless you told them.

Baked Whole Wheat Pancake Squares:

Ingredients:

3/4 cup milk
2 tbsp. melted butter
1 large egg
1 tbsp. sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat white flour (or use all white flour if you prefer)
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
cooking spray

Optional…try them with berries!

Directions:

Whenever I cook or bake, I pull out all of the ingredients so I don’t have to run around getting things out once my hands are dirty.

As you can see, this recipe doesn’t take anything that isn’t in the typical kitchen every day.

To get started, preheat your oven to 350 degrees and melt the butter. I use a small glass dish and microwave the butter for about 30 seconds.

In a large mixing, crack open the egg and beat it well. Then add the milk and butter and give it a good stir.

Add the sugar, and then add the flour a little at a time. I used a 1/4 cup measuring cup so I could split the flour into 4 portions, stirring it up before adding more.

Once all of the flour has been added, then add the baking powder and salt.

This recipe fits perfectly into an 8×8 square baking pan. If you don’t have one, a pie plate would also work, but since it’s a size used in a lot of recipes, you could also just buy one cheap at Amazon. Or you could double the recipe and put it into a 13×9 casserole sized pan.

Spray the pan with cooking spray and then pour in the batter.

By now, your oven should be preheated. Set the timer for 20 minutes and put the pan into the oven.

When you pull the pancakes out of the oven, they should have light cracking on the top and look completely dry, but not browned.

I decided these healthy baked pancakes deserved the real Vermont maple syrup that I purchased at Sugarbush Farms on my last vacation.

While you could put more butter on top of the pancakes, I didn’t think it was necessary. By cutting down on the butter, these pancakes are much healthier than the traditional version. They weren’t fried in a lot of butter, resulting in a substantially lower amount of butter in each pancake square than when you make them in a frying pan or griddle.

I really loved these pancakes. They taste a lot like pancakes you get at restaurants…and I’ve never found another home recipe to replicate that fluffiness and flavor.

I had a few leftover that I cut into squares and refrigerated for a quick breakfast (or snack) in the next few days. The Big Red Kitchen, the originator of the recipe, thinks they should freeze well too. She also mentioned that she has added things like chocolate chips, bananas and blueberries to the top just before baking.

If you make a double batch, you could make up a few different flavors to please everyone in the family!

I love Pinterest, Facebook and Google+ shares!

Printable recipe with nutritional information below.

SEE MORE BREAKFAST RECIPES: