Banana Pancakes

Banana Pancakes (Hairy Biker Style)

As it's coming up to Pancake day (tomorrow, in fact) we obviously need to do banana pancakes - goes without saying really, doesn't it!? :)

I still haven't quite mastered Protein Banana Pancakes, but may try out a recipe or two tomorrow.. in the meantime, this is my go to Banana Pancake recipe of choice. An ex-girlfriend made this for me originally and I loved it (with a few extra added bananas of course). It's a Hairy Bikers recipe that she got from the BBC Food Website. The original recipe included bacon, which I'm not interested in, so I did without..

I think that my major difference to the recipe below, excluding the bacon, is that I use skimmed milk and will be using coconut oil and I normally put extra bananas in there - eg. I'll blend one or two large bananas into the mixture and have an extra banana roughly chopped up, so that I get banana pieces in my finished pancake.

I'll take, and add, a photo tomorrow - just be assured, these are lovely!

Ingredients

• 55g/2oz butter, cubed
• 275g/9¾oz self–raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 free-range eggs
• 2 tbsp soft light brown sugar
• 300ml/½ pint whole milk
• 1 large banana, roughly chopped
• 1-2 tbsp sunflower oil
• maple or golden syrup, to serve

Method

• Preheat the oven to 110C/225F/Gas ¼.
• Melt 25g/1oz of the butter in a small pan over a low heat and leave to cool for five minutes.
• Put the melted butter, flour, baking powder, eggs, sugar and milk in a food processor and blend until smooth.
• Pour into a large bowl and mash the banana into the batter with a potato masher.
• Melt a little of the oil with a cube of butter in a large non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Wipe around the base of the pan with a thick wad of kitchen paper.
• Drop four large serving spoonfuls of the banana pancake mixture into the frying pan, spacing well apart. Cook for three minutes, or until the pancakes rise, bubbles appear and the surface appears dry.
• Flip over with a palette knife and cook on the other side for a further 2-3 minutes, or until pale golden-brown.
• Transfer to a heatproof plate and keep warm in the oven while you cook the remaining eight pancakes in exactly the same way.
• Return the frying pan to the heat and add the streaky bacon. Cook for about three minutes on each side until golden and crisp, turning once. Add a splash of oil if the rashers begin to stick.
• Pile the pancakes onto four warmed plates and top with the fried bacon. Drizzle with a little maple syrup (or golden syrup) and serve the rest separately.