CHOCOLATE BANANA PANCAKES.

I know! You asked for this recipe like 2 months ago or maybe even longer? Look, they are worth the wait and you'll forgive me for my tardiness once you've made them. Promise!

I’ve been adding a mashed banana to my pancakes forever and started doing this when I wanted to reduce the amount of processed sugar my family and I were consuming. I also don't see the point in the mass amounts of sugar most pancake recipes have in them when you are going to just pour maple syrup all over them. Like, hi, it’s liquid sugar essentially. Anyways, I can also appreciate that you don’t want your pancakes to taste like a piece of bread and that some sort of sweetness is required. A ripe banana, or more, is the perfect way of adding a natural sugar into your pancake batter. Plus, extra fibre am I right?

My toddler absolutely loves pancakes and it’s one of the breakfasts she requests often for our “fancy Wednesday” breakfast day. We change it up by adding different fruits to our batter but eventually you get kind of bored of plain pancakes with fruit. I must have been craving chocolate this particular morning when this recipe was born. Also, it doesn’t take much convincing to offer up a kid chocolate anything for breakfast, so total win. On the first go around of this recipe I only added the cocoa powder and some vegan chocolate chips. For the final recipe I decided to add a hazelnut spread (think Nutella, but an organic version) so we could cut out some of the chocolate chips. The spread worked great and I found it made the pancakes a little more moist. (I absolutely hate that word and can’t believe I’ve written it in this post.)

WET INGREDIENTS

• 1 ripe banana - mashed.

• 1 1/4 cup oat milk or other dairy free milk, or just milk if you prefer it.

• 2 tablespoons melted butter (or vegan butter)

• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 2 tablespoons hazelnut spread of your choice. We used Nutiva Organic Hazelnut spread that I bought at Healthy Planet.

DRY INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup of flour.

• 1 tablespoon baking powder.

• 1/4 cup cocoa powder.

DIRECTIONS

Combine all dry ingredients and stir together.

Combine all the wet ingredients. I suggest mashing the banana first, then adding the other wet ingredients on top of it. Once all wet ingredients are in the bowl, whisk them together.

Pour dry ingredients into the wet and stir until well combined.

Heat a non-stick pan to medium-low heat. I like to add a bit of coconut oil in the pan to ensure no sticking!

Scoop about 1/4 cup (or small soup ladle) of pancake batter into the pan. Flip once you see the middle of the pancake start to bubble a little bit. Keep an eye on them once you flip so you don’t burn it!

We added chopped raspberry’s right into our pancake batter and then topped it with sliced strawberries and more banana! I also definitely suggest a salty side to your pancake like bacon, breakfast sausage or hashbrown. The above recipe made 12 medium sized pancakes.

I did find the pancakes to be a little on the thin side vs. a fluffier pancake but I also “squish” my pancake down when I flip it so that could be why it was on the flatter side. The good thing about this recipe making so many pancakes, is it’s an easy no fuss breakfast for a few days after. I just reheat in the oven for my toddler.

Enjoy and don’t forget to tag me on Instagram or Tik Tok if you make them!