First of all my sister already posted a really delicious recipe for gluten-free lemon ginger pancakes a while back, which you all should try.   I cannot take any credit for the two pancake recipes posted here.  They are from the back of Bob’s Red Mill Amaranth Flour and Coconut Flour packages respectively (with a few small changes).  They are both fantastic pancake recipes and totally different from each other.  The Amaranth pancakes taste delicious and healthful like the pancakes that our excellent hippy parents made for us when we were little.  If you add apples to them they taste just like the pancakes that my biological father, Hank used to make when I would come to visit.  The coconut pancakes will satisfy any desire you have for a big stack of diner pancakes smothered in butter and maple syrup (without the food coma!)  They are very nice with blueberries in them.

I make pancakes once every weekend. I usually serve them with bacon or sausage, some whole milk plain yogurt, jam and caramelized fruit topping.  For the caramelize fruit topping I use whatever fruit did not get eaten up during the week because I cannot stand to waste food.  Luckily a sad, overripe piece of fruit can be made newly delicious using a process that I learned from one of the first friends that I made when I went to college.  This very sophisticated Sarah Lawrence girl taught me how to saute very ripe bananas in butter and then add cognac and set them on fire.  The result is a delicious boozy banana caramel.  It turns out that you do not actually need to set the bananas on fire to create this dish (although I still do it sometimes by mistake).    You just heat some butter in a wide heavy frying pan, slice the fruit right into the pan and when it begins to soften add a generous splash of the liquor.  Let it cook down, scraping the pan until the sugar from the fruit begins to get gooey and golden.  This process works well with a number of different fruits and booze combinations…pears and Frangelico, peaches and Grand Marnier, apples and Drambuie.

AMARANTH PANCAKES

please note that the quantities here produce only 4 pancakes.  I am only cooking for myself and my fiance and we always have a lot of fruit, yogurt and breakfast meat along with it.  It is easy to double or triple if you want more pancakes.  I actually mix up a huge batch of the dry ingredients every few months and store it in my fridge so that I can make pancakes quickly just by adding eggs, milk and oil.

• oil for the pan
• 1 egg beaten
• 1/4 cup apple juice, milk, yogurt, cream, buttermilk, soy or rice milk
• 1 teaspoon oil
• 1/4 cup tapioca flour
• 3 Tablespoons arrowroot starch
• 1/4 cup Amaranth flour (quinoa four works too!)
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (do not omit this.  The cinnamon interacts favourably with the nutty flavour of the amaranth)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/2 of an apple diced very small (optional)

1. Gently whisk the wet ingredients together.
2. Start the oil warming in a large heavy skillet over medium heat.
3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and whisk until all of the lumps are out.
4. Add the apple if you are using it.
5. Drop 1/4 cup of the batter into the hot skillet  4 times.
6. When bubbles form, flip the pancakes and let them cook on the other side for a couple of minutes.
7. I like to serve these pancakes with whole milk plain yogurt and caramelized apples or pears.