The Great Pancake Debate

If you have interacted with me at all, you know at least one thing about me...I. LOVE. PANCAKES. And if you have interacted with me and you didn't know that, you obviously weren't listening to me while I was speaking.

While I could eat pancakes all day everyday for the rest of my existence, it's not the healthiest of breakfast dishes. So how lucky was I, that in the course of one day, I found TWO healthier pancake recipes to try out?! The challenge was practically handed to me on a silver platter, thus resulting in...

THE GREAT PANCAKE DEBATE

I found these recipes in an outdated fitness magazine that I had laying around my house, but you can easily search for the recipes online. The first recipe, the pancakes pictured on the left, was for Cinnamon Quinoa Cakes. Obviously this recipe HAD to be healthy...it has one of the top superfoods in it! After a bit of research, I found a recipe online that was a bit easier to follow than the one in my magazine:

I already had cooked quinoa, so that cut down on a good bit of prep time (no one has time to wait for quinoa to cook first thing in the morning). I'm not going to lie...this recipe frustrated me. The easiest part about this wasn't even eating it. That was tough too! No, the easiest part was mixing the quinoa with the other ingredients.

Now this is where things get tricky...flipping. I'll be the first to admit, I'm not the best at flipping pancakes. But seriously, you need special skills to flip these cakes. You may notice below that picture 1 does not look like picture 2. This is mostly because I got SO FRUSTRATED with the flipping process, I put the half cooked cake back into the batter, took a deep breath, and started over. So really the time it took to cook the quinoa I spent trying to flip these babies.

Eating them! The best part!...or so I thought. The pancakes are naturally sweet from the honey and spices you put in, so I opted for a topping of bananas.

The pancakes were good...but difficult to eat. They immediately fall apart when you try to pick them up with a fork (I mean, they are made out of quinoa). After a few attempts with the fork, I gave up and dumped the entire dish into a bowl, replacing my fork with a spoon. I finished the dish satisfied...but confused.

Day 2: Oatmeal Pancakes. I used the original recipe that I found in my magazine:

The one thing I did change in this recipe was I didn't use blueberries. Instead, I blended banana into the batter. The most difficult part about this recipe was probably grinding up the dry ingredients. The oats just didn't want to break down, so it took a while. I was also thrown off when, after adding the wet ingredients, it produced an icky color and texture...

But really, I'm just thankful that these ones were easier to flip.

The oatmeal cakes took less time to make than the quinoa ones. And they turned out looking like actual pancakes.

Naturally sweet because of the banana and the maple syrup, I added just a little bit more banana on top. After taking the first bite, I immediately knew who I would declare the winner...

I will DEFINITELY be making these Oatmeal Pancakes again! With only about half the calories in a normal stack of pancakes (a plate of 3 pancakes at IHOP with syrup can average out to be around 530 calories) these cakes are much lighter. Personally, I found them to be a bit heartier too!

Aren't you all glad I'm here for you? To test out these pancakes and announce my thoughts to the world?! I've got your backs readers. Seriously, what you you all do without your own pancake connoisseur?

Thanks for reading, all! :)

P.S. If you have an easier technique when it comes to flipping quinoa cakes...let me know, ASAP.