Banana bread pancakes

When I was growing up, pancake day was a familiar and predictable affair: after dinner (or ‘tea’ as we refer to it in Lincolnshire, much to the confusion of Southeners), mum would whip up a light and thin crepe batter and the table would be scattered with lemon wedges and a couple of pots of golden syrup and caster sugar. And we loved it!

Like with many things since that more simple time, choice now overwhelms us and we’re bombarded with social media trends and ideas for how best to enjoy pancakes on pancake day. Crepes or American style? High protein fanatics are telling us to use cottage cheese, but Americans are telling us to use buttermilk. Savoury or sweet, or sweet and savoury? A buckwheat galette, perhaps?

Pancakes inspired by loved cake flavours seem to be as trendy as velour tracksuits with bedazzled butterfly hair clips in the early 2000s right now: red velvet, lemon drizzle, sticky toffee. My pancake day recipe offering is pretty simple by comparison with these banana bread pancakes, but I like the idea of making pancakes that are a little bit different to the usual ones we make for pancake day, but made with ingredients we’re likely to have in anyway. I’ve written out some notes on the ingredients used and substitutions to make this banana bread pancake recipe nice and simple and I hope you give them a try!

How wet should my mixture be for this banana bread pancake batter?

Writing recipes is always a bit of a tricky business, because there are so many factors that make up a recipe’s success! This includes ratios and variances with ingredients. The more ripe your bananas, the wetter (and sweeter) your banana bread pancake batter. The quality of the flour and baking powder used may also make a difference in the overall batter. Use this recipe as a baseline and know that the batter should have a ‘soft dropping’ consistency. That means that it should hold well on a spoon but should easily plop off the spoon in one nice blob. Very technical terms, I know!! If you need to loosen the batter, add a little more milk. If it’s too loose, add a little more flour.

How ripe should my bananas be?

Banana bread really benefits from really ripe bananas. They're much easier to mash down into a puree when they’re riper and they’re also sweeter. Ideally, you want your banana skins to be flecked with lots of brown spots for these banana bread pancakes.

Substitutions and toppings:

Chopped nuts would be really nice within the batter for these banana bread pancakes, or as a topping. I’ve purposefully kept the recipe simple but chopped pecans or walnuts would be great!

I’ve used dark chocolate chips, but milk would be nice, or you could sub these for nuts or raisins/sultanas/dates.

For toppings, I just went with more chocolate chips, fresh banana and some syrup. Chopped nuts, chocolate sauce, peanut butter or dried banana chips would be great, too.

Banana bread pancakes (makes around 8-10 pancakes)

120g self raising flour

2 ripe mashed bananas

1tsp baking powder

1 egg

2tbsp light brown sugar

150ml milk

1/3tsp ground cinnamon (optional)

40g dark chocolate chips

Method:

Whisk the dry ingredients together.

In a separate bowl, mix the wet ingredients together until well combined.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and mix until combined.

Lightly rub a non stick frying pan with a little butter using some kitchen roll/paper towel.

Cook the pancakes on a low to medium heat and flip once little bubbles start to form and pop on the surface of the pancakes. These pancakes only need a couple of minutes on each side!