Vegan Coconut Flour Pancakes

These delicious gluten-free and vegan coconut flour pancakes are the perfect healthy breakfast. They have crispy, golden edges and the crunch of chia seeds, the seductive sweetness of bananas, and the nutty goodness of buckwheat and oats. They are also vegan, gluten-free, nut-free and soy-free.

If a clean, delicious breakfast recipe is what you're looking for in the midst of a season of excesses, I've got it for you. It's for my Vegan Gluten-free Coconut Flour Pancakes, and I can promise you will love them, whether or not you are gluten-free.

These are made with buckwheat flour, oat flour and coconut flour and you stir into them a couple of blended bananas, nondairy milk, a soupcon of vanilla, and chia seeds for some crunch and more healthful goodness.

There's no added sugar here, the bananas add a delicious sweetness (although serving these with some maple syrup and vegan whipped cream is a wonderful idea). And there's no added oil--you can spritz a touch of cooking spray on your griddle or make these in a nonstick griddle without any oil as well (you probably won't get that incredible golden color but they'll still taste great).

We are big lovers of pancakes in our home, with my vegan pancakes and my vegan sourdough blueberry pancakes usually getting top honors. These coconut pancakes are now at the top of that list too, and I hope they'll go on yours.

Tips for success

• I used three kinds of gluten-free flours in these pancakes -- buckwheat, oat and coconut flour. Tapioca starch adds binding muscle and the pureed bananas help hold it all together and make these pancakes tender and fluffy and sweet. You could replace the three flours with gf all purpose flour, but you won't get as much flavor.
• Don't just mash the bananas before adding them to the pancake batter. Blend them with half a cup of nondairy milk to create a really smooth puree that you will stir into the dry ingredients, then add in the remaining milk.
• I like adding chia seeds here because they add great crunch; you can sub out with flaxmeal (not flax seeds). Stir the chia seeds at the end and let the batter stand five to 10 minutes before making the pancakes.
• I used a ⅓rd cup measure to scoop out the pancake batter on the griddle. It made 16 pancakes that were about three inches wide.
• A spritz of cooking spray is enough to cook these pancakes on the griddle. Once you get them on there, keep a close eye because coconut flour is oily and they will burn easily. Flip over once the underside is nicely golden, which should take a couple of minutes.
• Make sure you keep the pancakes long enough on the griddle to cook the batter through. A good rule of thumb is to let the edges dry up and wait for bubbles to appear around the middle. If the pancakes are browning too fast, turn down the heat.
• You can eat these pancakes by themselves, they are quite sweet with the bananas. Some fruit is also great with these. If you have a sweeter tooth, trickle some maple syrup on or serve these with vegan whipped cream.

(Desi's the resident food photographer for this blog, but my son, Jay, has increasingly been helping out as well, and is shaping up into a fine photographer. This one showing the cross section of the pancakes (above) was taken by him, as was the top featured photo in my last post on vegan Instant Pot Mashed Potatoes :)).

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