Bento for Baby Recipe: Dan's Awesome Pancakes

Here is the long promised recipe for "Dan's Awesome Pancakes."  That's the name my husband gave them when I asked him to type up the recipe. He's very modest, as you can tell. But, honestly, they are actually pretty awesome, just don't tell him that. Dan makes many different kinds of pancakes and waffles, they're all great, but these are some of the best he's made. They came about as a bit of an accident, he was going to make yogurt waffles, but we were low on yogurt so he used some ricotta we had. Then I threw him through a loop by asking for pancakes rather than waffles after he had mixed everything, so he had to make some changes to the leavening agents to accommodate my request. The result is a really light and fluffy pancake that tastes fantastic and also sticks with you and keeps you full all morning. And, like most of the things we make around here, they are low in sugar and have whole wheat flour. Dan uses King Arthur's White Whole Wheat Flour in a lot of baked goods, it adds the goodness of whole grains without the heaviness of typical whole wheat flour.

Ingredients:

1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs
1/2 cup whole milk ricotta
1/2 cup plain whole milk yogurt
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon canola oil

1 1/2 cups frozen blueberries

Directions:

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a small bowl with whisk to aerate them. In a larger bowl lightly beat the eggs and then add the rest of the wet ingredients and thoroughly mix. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, stir mixture until smooth.

Heat a lightly oiled frying pan or griddle over medium heat. Dollop small amounts of batter on the prepared griddle to make pancakes of desired size. Drop a few frozen blueberries on each pancake. Let cook until edges of pancake firm up and small bubbles form on the top, then flip. Let cook until each side is golden brown. Serve immediately or let cool and place in freezer bag to enjoy in the future.

We enjoy these fresh fruit and real maple syrup, Baby Girl enjoys them plain or with some yogurt.