Veggie Pancakes

How do you slip veggies into your kids’ meals? Let me know!

I am always trying to find ways to add more vegetables to my family’s diet. This weekend, my niece and nephew visited and I made them vegetable pancakes!

It seems to be a textural thing rather than taste, so by marrying grains with vegetables, I can give them a healthy, well-balanced meal they enjoyed eating. Here’s the veggie pancake recipe that I found:

Wet Ingredients
1 ½ cups of vegetables (shredded zucchini, carrot, onion and frozen corn)
3 eggs (1 full egg and 2 egg whites)
4 TB (½ stick) butter
1 ¾ cups milk

Dry Ingredients
1 cup whole wheat flour
¾ cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cornmeal
¼ cup oats
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

These pancakes are really very simple to make. The most time consuming part is preparing the vegetables, so do that first.

Start by shredding 1 ½ cups of vegetables. For my pancakes, I used zucchini, carrot and onion and then added some frozen corn. But you can use whatever vegetables you like. (And if your child is not ready for chunky foods, you can pre-cook and puree the vegetables and place them in the batter that way). Once shredded or pureed, place the vegetables aside. Crack open three eggs and place one full egg and two of the egg whites into a small bowl. Whip the eggs and then add the butter and mix until creamy. Now, add the milk and vegetables and stir all of the wet ingredients together.

In a large bowl, add the wheat flour, all-purpose flour, cornmeal, oats, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix the dry ingredients. Then add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix them together. At this point, heat up a griddle or frying pan over medium heat. Add a bit of butter to the pan, if desired, to help keep the pancakes from sticking. Pour on about 1/8 cup of batter for each pancake – on my griddle I cooked three pancakes at a time. Cook for about 3 minutes, until bottom of pancake is set. Flip and continue cooking for 2 minutes. The recipe makes about 12 pancakes. I like to keep the cooked pancakes in a warm oven as I cook the remaining batter.

We all enjoyed the pancakes topped with butter and sour cream. I also served homemade apple sauce on the side, which turned out to be a lovely combination. The texture of these pancakes is great! My niece and nephew loved them and I loved seeing them eating up their vegetables (secretly hidden in those pancakes) and since breakfast is my husband’s favorite meal, he loved them too! Now, it may be “breakfast for dinner” at our house.