Veggie Brauncakes

This recipe is so forgiving. It’s like the Recipe of Theseus. I have substituted almost all of the ingredients, and it seems like it comes out the same every time. I have put in applesauce instead of eggs, milk after it has gone sour, baking soda and whey instead of baking powder, white flour instead of wheat flour.

I usually triple the recipe, and that’s enough for several meals for the seven of us. 

I first tried this recipe with beets (don’t get pickled beets, that was a mistake I made once). It was on Valentine’s Day and I made them in the shape of hearts and called them Pink HeartBeet Pancakes.

Beets turn the pancakes pink, spinach turns the pancakes green, and carrots turn the pancakes orange. Any of these veggies taste good.

I’m not sure how much vitamins and minerals retain their value when blended and baked and mixed with simple sugars… It’s possibly better than a meal of fast food or processed food.

These pancakes don’t need butter or syrup. On busy soccer days, I make a batch (three at once) and take a gallon bag of them to practice. The kids I’m not coaching munch on them on the sidelines and sometimes they don’t leave them open for the ants, who also like veggie pancakes. Judging by the ants’ response to them, they are more like pancakes and less like spinach.

I will put the recipe for a single batch here, since it’s a good idea to make only a single batch of a new recipe. This is advice I always ignore. 

Veggie Brauncakes

Dry ingredients
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 Tablespoon baking POWDER
1/2 teaspoon salt

Wet ingredients
1 can of pureed beets (or canned carrots, or a can-sized amount of spinach. Maybe 1/3 of a bag, blended?)
1 1/4 cups milk
1/3 cup Greek yogurt
1 egg
3 Tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla 2/3 cup chocolate chips

Stir the dry ingredients in a medium bowl with a spoon. Blend the wet ingredients (in a blender). Mix the wet and dry ingredients together in the medium bowl until there are no more lumps. Children tend to not like lumps of baking powder in their mouths. Add the chocolate chips. Stir the batter each time right before scooping 1/3 cup onto the griddle or pan (the chips tend to settle to the bottom).  Flip them anytime after the batter turns less shiny and the holes from bubbles don’t fill themselves in after they pop. Remove them from the griddle when your spatula stays dry when you test underneath them. But really, these are so forgiving. I have never burned them, and I have forgotten a batch or two for quite a while.

You can replace the milk and the Greek yogurt with just homemade yogurt. If you do this, you can also substitute the Tablespoon of baking POWDER with 1 teaspoon of baking SODA. Baking soda is cheaper, but it needs acid to make it work (Baking powder is baking soda plus cream of tartar, which sounds and is acidic). Whey, which is what comes out of yogurt when it is strained to make Greek yogurt, is acidic. So you can replace the milk with whey and the Greek yogurt with strained yogurt… and then do you really need to strain it? I say no. Here is the recipe again with these substitutions. 

Veggie Brauncakes with Homemade Yogurt

Dry ingredients
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking SODA
1/2 teaspoon salt

Wet ingredients
1 can of pureed beets (or canned carrots, or a can-sized amount of spinach. Maybe 1/3 of a bag, blended?)
2 cups homemade yogurt
1 egg
3 Tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla 2/3 cup chocolate chips

Use the same directions as above. You will also need my yogurt recipe. Since you asked, here it is!

Homemade Yogurt

1 gallon of whole milk (I think whole milk is tastiest, but any milk could probably be used) at least 1/2 cup of yogurt with explicitly live and active cultures. (The person I got this recipe from prefers Fage.) 

Pour the gallon of whole milk into a cleaned crockpot. Cook for 2.5 hours in a crockpot, or until the milk gets to be 180 degrees. This process can probably be done with the yogurt button on an Instant Pot, but mine doesn’t have that button, so I can’t speak to it. The important thing is that you get the milk hot enough to kill all the random bacteria that may be in the milk. 

Let the cooked milk cool down. I put plastic wrap over the top of the instant pot insert and remove it to set it on the cooktop stove until it is between 115 and 120 degrees. Here is a quick way to test this: Put your hand on the side. If you are able to keep it there, it is cool enough. The first moment you could keep your hand there is when it is the right temperature. I theorize that yogurt bacteria evolved with humans so we both like the same temperature. We love it when it is nice and toasty, but if it’s too hot, then we die. 
  Next, we need to add the live and active cultures from the pre-made yogurt. We are going to leave the milk out in the “danger zone” (the party zone?) all night, so we need to make sure only the bacteria we want is in the milk. I am really careful about washing everything that will touch the milk right before I use it. 

Hand wash a cup with a handle, a large spoon, a plate, and a thermometer if you want to be exact about the temperature (I don’t). Scoop a half cupful of milk from the pot, set the cup on the plate, spoon some yogurt into the cup, and stir. Pour the milky yogurt into the pot.  Put the instant pot insert back in the instant pot and cover it with the lid. The yogurt should remain warm for at least 8 hours. Overnight is perfect. Two and a half days is too long. 

After you think it’s ready, you want to get some out to use as starter for next time. Hand wash a spoon and tupperware dish (take out and wash the rubber sealing ring, if your tupperware has one). Also have 4 large jars ready. The yogurt should be white and kind of firm. If there are swirls of yellowish clear liquid, that is whey and it is normal. If there is any other color, I’d throw away the whole pot.  Put two spoonfuls of yogurt into the tupperware dish and mark it “starter” on the outside. It can last for a couple of weeks. Check it for mold before using. 

The yogurt will be runnier than you expect yogurt to be. The store adds something to make it thicker. I love Chia seeds for this purpose (though not all my kids do).

To make Greek yogurt, strain out the whey. My favorite way to do this is to remove the yogurt to jars, wash the instant pot insert, and put a colander layered with more than 4 layers of cheesecloth inside the instant pot insert. Pour some yogurt onto the cheesecloth and let it drain (inside the fridge!) for a day or so. The whey in the pot is high in protein and can be used for smoothies or replacing milk in baking recipes. 

The strained yogurt is so tasty, especially if you used whole milk. 

I like to make homemade yogurt because I get to control what goes in the yogurt (usually nothing else!), because I get a gallon of yogurt for the price of a gallon of milk, because it is easy and fun, and because I get to control the fates of millions of tiny organisms.