4-Ingredient Healthy Vegan Pancakes

These might just be the easiest healthy pancakes you'll ever make. Made from just four simple ingredients — oats, banana, plant milk and a little baking powder — they're naturally sweet, beautifully fluffy in the middle, and crisp around the edges thanks to the caramelised banana. They feel indulgent enough for a lazy Sunday breakfast, but they're packed with the goodness of wholegrain oats, making them the sort of breakfast you can enjoy any day of the week.

Ingredients (makes 12 small pancakes):

1 & 1/2 cups oats
1 cup soy milk
1 ripe banana (ripe with black spots essential)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 Tbsp oil to fry (I used cold-pressed rapeseed oil)

Method:

Blend the oats in a food processor (or chopping attachment of a hand-held blender) until a rough oat flour has formed. In a bowl, mash the banana with a fork until it forms a puree, then add the banana puree and soy milk to the oats and mix well to form a batter.

Heat a little oil in a non-stick pan, then pour small ladles of the batter into the pan (you should fit 3-4 pancakes into a large frying pan). Fry for 2 minutes, or until golden and crispy, then use a spatula to carefully flip them over to fry for a further 2 minutes.

Stack the pancakes up and top with whatever you like – try yoghurt, fresh fruit, frozen fruit warmed up with a touch of cinnamon, coconut flakes, maple syrup, peanut or almond butter etc.

Nutrition (per 4 pancakes, before any toppings added):

Protein: 9.5g
Iron: 2.3mg
Calories: 258
Sugar: 8.3g
Total Fat: 6.8g
Saturated Fat: 0.9g
Salt: 0.3g
Fibre: 5.5g

This recipe is based on the simple pancake formula from my Cook Like a Nutritionist eBook (which includes formulas for 14 different meals). The idea isn't to memorise recipes, but to learn the structure behind them so you can swap ingredients in and out and create hundreds of delicious variations depending on what's in your fridge, what's in season, or simply what you're craving that day.