Birthday Boy and Birthday Pancakes

Seth-boy turned three last week! I can’t believe it! My little baby is THREE!

This is Seth at 3 months…he was so little! Still is actually, the difference between my Seth-boy peanut and Baby Cameron Giant is 7lbs and 7 inches! Their personalities are very different as well. Seth is very talkative and even as a baby would jabber all the time. Cameron doesn’t make to much noise except when he is crying or laughing, he likes to look at everything and smile.

There is a tradition on my side of the family that on your birthday you get smiley faced pancakes. But before we could get to those Seth had to find his birthday mail he had received from our chiropractor the day before. He LOVED opening each and every card he got, I never thought a three year old would be so excited about mail, I need to remember that for next year. 🙂

These weren’t just any pancakes, these were Chocolate Chip Smiley Faced Pancakes. 🙂 Chocolate chips were the request of the birthday boy. 🙂 Recipe will be below. According to BioMeridian testing Seth is allergic, or at least intolerant to dairy, so we spread them with  coconut oil and Log Cabin Table Syrup, which is a mixture of brown rice syrup and brown sugar. My super picky hubby doesn’t even know it isn’t the “normal” high fructose corn syrup type.

We had chiropractor appointments in the morning, so our morning wasn’t to fun, but Seth did get to take one of his new trucks on our “walk to Daddy” that night. He pushed it most of the way. 🙂

We made a cake that afternoon as well…nothing to special since we have decided we aren’t going to do another big birthday party until he turns five. We had a big first birthday party and we’ll probably do big parties at five, ten, thirteen, sixteen…or not. We’ll just see what happens when we get there. Right now, I don’t even want to think ahead to five, let alone any of the other birthdays.

 See those dishes in the back, I think it makes for a beautiful background don’t you? Just know our house is pretty much never clean all at once, unless the boys are in bed, or gone, and then it doesn’t last that long.

So this pancake recipe is one of our favorites lately, I say lately because I love pancakes and I love trying new recipes all the time. I was going to post our top five favorite recipes, complete with clicky’s to a Pinterest page, but I don’t have that set up yet… I will get to that soon though.

This is from this cookbook:

If you can’t read the whole title it is:  Nourishing Meals: Healthy Gluten Free Recipes for the Whole Family and it is written by Alissa Segersten and Tom Malterre, MS, CN. We haven’t tried a recipe that we haven’t liked so far.

There is a two day process to this recipe to allow the grains time to soak. This breaks down phytates in the grain which allows our bodies to absorb the nutrients from them and digest them much easier. It’s super easy though! I will type the recipe in its entirety and then tell you the few things I had to change in parentheses.

Overnight Quinoa Hot Cakes

Day 1:

1/2 cup uncooked quinoa

1/2 cup uncooked buckwheat groats

1/2 cup gluten free rolled oats

1 cup plain kefir or yogurt- cow, goat, or coconut (I use water here, put a tablespoon of lemon juice in a 1 cup measuring cup and fill the rest with water, you need the acid to break down the phytates.)

1/2 cup water

 

Day 2:

2 large, organic eggs (we have egg issues, so I mix up flax eggs, 1 T flax seed meal in 3 T water per egg, there is no need to let it sit and gel in this recipe, just put it right in.)

1 T maple syrup or honey

3/4 t baking soda

1/4 t sea salt

 

coconut oil for cooking

Optional additions:

cinnamon

chopped banana

chopped nuts

fresh or frozen berries

(or for us on Birthday day dairy free chocolate chips, I used Ghiradelli Mini Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips)

 

Before you go to bed at night, place the grains into a bowl and pour the kefir or yogurt and water over them; stir to combine. Set a plate over the bowl and leave it on the counter overnight or for about 8-10 hours.

In the morning, pour the grains and kefir into a blender. Add the eggs, maple syrup or honey, baking soda and salt. Blend until smooth. Stir in any of the optional additions.

Heat a cast iron or stainless steel skillet over medium low heat. Add a little butter or coconut oil to the pan and drop batter by the 1/4 cup. Cook for 60-90 seconds on each side. Repeat with remaining batter.

Yield; 10-12 pancakes. ( I don’t get this many, because I just pout it out of the blender into the pan, we maybe get 5. Also, if you want to dirty less dishes you can just soak the grains right in the blender. And finally, I have used this with several different grains, just using what I have on hand and it has always turned out.)

Now, go try them and let me know what you think!! What are your favorite pancakes add ins?